Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s long-gestating Hulk Hogan project is officially not happening.
According to TMZ, the duo quietly shelved development on Killing Gawker months ago, well before Hogan’s sudden death last week at age 71. The decision reportedly had nothing to do with the wrestling icon’s passing.
The project, acquired by Affleck and Damon’s Artists Equity banner in 2024, aimed to dramatize Hogan’s notorious legal battle against Gawker after they published a sex tape from 2007 showing Hogan with his best friend’s wife, and caught him dropping a racial slur. That lawsuit crushed Gawker in 2016, resulting in a $31 million payout for Hogan, thanks in part to backing from tech billionaire Peter Thiel.
As Awful Announcing’s Sean Keeley carefully laid out, this whole series of events wasn’t just about Hogan vs. a blog. It turned into a massive debate about privacy, free speech, and how billionaires can pull strings behind the scenes to shape the media.
Though Affleck was rumored to portray Hogan, the wrestler was not involved in the project and reportedly warned he’d take legal action if the film crossed any lines. Alongside the Killing Gawker project, another Hogan biopic starring Chris Hemsworth and featuring Hogan as executive producer also stalled before coming to fruition.
Netflix, meanwhile, had been developing a Hogan docuseries before his death from cardiac arrest. The streamer reportedly filmed over 30 hours of footage, including more than 20 hours of interviews with Hogan himself.
Damon and Affleck’s film may be dead, but the Gawker saga they wanted to capture remains one of the wildest and most consequential media battles of the modern era.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.