Brian Storkel, the director of the upcoming Hulk Hogan documentary for Netflix, appeared on Wrestling Observer Live with Bryan Alvarez to preview the four part series, which is scheduled for release on Netflix on April 22, 2026.
A four part, four hour documentary with full cooperation from Hogan himself
Storkel told Alvarez that the documentary will be a full four hours long, split into four chronological parts covering the entirety of Terry Bollea’s life and career. He said Hogan’s full participation in the project is what allowed them to go deeper than any previous Hogan documentary.
“It comes out on April 22 on Netflix. We have four parts. So it’s a full, you know, four hours of Hulk Hogan and Terry Bollea. I think that’s the incredible thing with this is, I think we were able to go a lot deeper than other past projects, you know, just because we had full participation from Terry. And then also being able to have four hours to dive in. There’s just so much in his life, in his career, that we know about, but then there’s so much more in his personal life that we were able to get into that hasn’t been told before.”
Storkel walked Alvarez through what each of the four parts will cover.
“It’s all pretty much chronological. So part one is the rise and just the backstory from his childhood all the way up to the early days of wrestling in Florida, Championship Wrestling, up to Minnesota, early days of WWF. And then it kind of culminates with him becoming the Hulk Hogan and headed back to the WWF.”
“Episode two is more the height of Hulkamania, from the Iron Sheik all the way through WrestleMania one, WrestleMania III, gets all the way through five, I believe.”
“Our third episode is Hollywood Hogan. So it had both his years in Hollywood in the movies. We talked to some people like Christopher Lloyd about Suburban Commando and things. And then it goes into him in the NWO era of actually becoming the bad guy, Hollywood Hogan, and takes us all the way through, I think, The Rock and WrestleMania 18.”
“And then the final episode is kind of everything after wrestling. It’s like he’s trying to figure out how to get out of wrestling, does the reality show, other things come up, obviously there’s some scandal and some things that happen afterwards. And then it leads us all the way through the RNC and Donald Trump and through his death. So it covers extensively his entire life.”
One of the more revealing parts of the interview was Storkel’s account of the production timeline. Filming on the documentary wrapped up just weeks before Hogan entered the hospital, and the team was still planning additional shoots at the time of his death.
“The timing couldn’t have been crazier, because I only met with him in person in February. We filmed March and April, five days of his main interview where he told his whole life story, and then there was a lot of other stuff. We went on the road with him, filmed in Florida with him, a bunch. I’d say we were 90 percent shot, and we were probably going to do a few more pickup things down the road. But we shot in March and April. He went in the hospital in May, and then never really recovered.”
Storkel said his team had the main interview in the can and had everything they needed to tell the story, but had planned more intimate shoots with Hogan that never got to happen.
“So we had everything we needed to tell his story. I think some of the more fun things, you know, like when I left last, he was like, okay, we’re going to go out in the boat next time. So I was excited to do that. Or one of the things I really wanted to do was film him up close, just grooming his mustache. I never got to do that. But as far as telling his story, we got pretty much everything we needed, and we’d been in the edit already. There was just a chance to go shoot a little bit more with him that we never got.”
The documentary will be released on Netflix on April 22, 2026, three days after the second night of WrestleMania 42 and five days after the WWE Hall of Fame ceremony where Hulk Hogan is being inducted as part of the Immortal Moment category for his WrestleMania III match with Andre the Giant.
If you use quotes from this article, please credit Wrestling Observer Live with Bryan Alvarez and include a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
