WWE News: Vince McMahon Movie Script Leaks Out, What’s Fact And What’s Fiction In ‘Pandemonium’?


Leaked drafts from the planned Vince McMahon autobiographical movie, Pandemonium, have found their way to the wrestling “dirt sheets,”and by the looks of things, there’s a lot more fiction than fact to be found in these drafts.

According to PWInsider‘s Mike Johnson, Pandemonium is now set to be produced by TriStar Pictures and WWE Studios, with This is Us executive producers Glenn Ficarra and John Requa penciled in to direct. The script was written by Craig A. Williams, who wrote Disney’s live-action version of Underdog, and it has gone through several drafts since 2015. That suggests a powerhouse team behind a biopic that’s set to depict the life and times of arguably the most powerful man in the wrestling business. But PWInsider cited its “sources and friends in the Hollywood community” in noting that the film is littered with inaccurate or embellished details and questionable portrayals of several mainstays of the wrestling industry, including McMahon’s own family members.

WrestlingNews.co, which claims to have gotten access to the drafts, compiled a list of notable takeaways from the Vince McMahon movie, noting that several items are either fictionalized or embellished.

One key fictional detail was the scene where Vince’s wife Linda is shown working as a waitress in a strip club. WrestlingNews.co wrote that Linda McMahon had actually worked as a receptionist at a law firm during the early years of her marriage to Vince. Additionally, certain people from the wrestling business were used to replace others in the script, with Jim Crockett penciled into the role played in real-life by former World Championship Wrestling (WCW) executive Eric Bischoff. Ted Turner, who owned WCW until it folded in 2001, was likewise portrayed as having a “vendetta” against McMahon during the “Monday Night Wars” of the 1990s.

Vince McMahon purchased the WWE, then known as the WWWF, from his father,
Vince McMahon Sr., in 1982. [Image by WWE]

Also standing out in the leaked drafts from the Vince McMahon movie were the unusual and untrue circumstances in which Vince hired some of the most iconic wrestlers to ever work for the WWE. “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, for instance, was purportedly hired after a stint in jail, while “Superfly” Jimmy Snuka, Andre the Giant, and The Junkyard Dog had the following jobs, respectively – adult film star, French restaurant owner, and construction worker. In all three cases, these wrestlers had actually been involved in the wrestling business long before they joined what was then known as the WWF, and no record exists of the wrestlers ever taking such jobs in order to pay the bills.

Inaccurate details about Vince McMahon’s family appeared in the leaked movie script for Pandemonium, as his father Vince McMahon Sr. was portrayed as having died in 1994, and not in 1984 as he did in real life. There’s also a scene where Vince Jr.’s children, Shane and Stephanie McMahon, are shown teaming up and physically attacking bullies who taunted them about their father’s legal problems at the time. As Shane was born in 1970 and Stephanie in 1976, it’s highly implausible that their paths would have crossed in high school.

The alleged affair between the late “Macho Man” Randy Savage and a then-teenaged Stephanie McMahon was referenced in one of the leaked drafts. In that scene, Vince and Savage are discussing how the “Macho Man” has a lot of young female fans, but Savage tells Vince that he “would never think of touching” Stephanie.

In real life, the Montreal Screwjob motivated Vince McMahon to become a villainous on-air character. [Image by WWE]

Additionally, it would appear that the leaked scripts have changed the motivation behind Vince McMahon’s decision to play a villainous version of himself — “Mr. McMahon” — during WWE’s “Attitude Era” in the late ’90s and early 2000s. Instead of the real-life Montreal Screwjob, where McMahon and other WWE officials allegedly changed the finish of Bret Hart vs. Shawn Michaels at the 1997 Survivor Series to ensure Hart didn’t join WCW while still WWE Champion, the scripts suggest a completely different motivation — the revelation of McMahon’s infidelity during his steroid trials in the 1990s.

Amid all the incorrect information, one partial truth cited by both WrestlingNews.co and PWInsider were the varying visions Vince McMahon Jr. and Sr. had for WWE — the former preferred a more entertainment-based product, while the latter stuck by his old-school beliefs and wanted fans to watch wrestling as a legitimate sport.

Although it would seem that Vince McMahon’s movie script has inaccuracies left and right, PWInsider wrote that the involvement of McMahon and WWE Studios would ensure that changes will be made. According to the publication, “at least one complete rewrite” may be requested, with the rewrite removing “a lot of the racier elements,” including references to the rumored affair between Randy Savage and Stephanie McMahon. The changes may also include a more realistic portrayal of Vince McMahon Sr. and other prominent characters from his son’s life, but in any case, Vince Jr. will have the final word, being the subject of the biopic and owner of the company being featured.

“The belief is that since Vince has sold the rights to his life story in order for this project to move forward, he will have complete approval over the final version of the script well before it begins filming.”

Additionally, PWInsider noted that there are new writers likely to be brought in, and no specific timetable or prospective cast members for the Vince McMahon movie. But even if Pandemonium is still far away from seeing the light of day, the wild inaccuracies in the leaked drafts suggest the film may “(add) to the mythos and strange story” of the McMahon wrestling family.

[Featured Image by WWE]

Share this article: WWE News: Vince McMahon Movie Script Leaks Out, What’s Fact And What’s Fiction In ‘Pandemonium’?
More from Inquisitr