The decision to cancel Spike Lee's ESPN documentary about former football player Colin Kaepernick was made last year.
The Highest 2 Lowest director chatted with the Ebro In the Morning crew on Wednesday (August 20) and briefly spoke on the documentary news just days after its cancellation was announced. In a statement, it was said that ESPN, Lee and Kaepernick "collectively decided to no longer proceed with this project as a result of certain creative differences." The project about the civil rights activist was intended to last for eight episodes.
"Here's the thing though," Lee began. "...It can't be news 'til somebody says something. So that happened a year ago, but it just got out. No one ever asked
me 'til the other day."
Lee added that it was literally "the other day" when he was asked about the documentary. "And so, it's not something that just happened overnight. That happened a year ago," he said.
The filmmaker said that while it was "unfortunate" that the documentary didn't move forward as planned, he and the project's team "have all moved on because the whole thing fell apart a year ago."
"I gotta keep it moving," he added.
Lee previously told Reuters that he "can't talk about" the scrapped documentary.
Although not a documentary, Kaepernick did have a semi-biographical Netflix drama about his childhood, Colin in Black & White, which lasted for one season.
Towards the end of his NFL career as quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, Kaepernick knelt during football games in protest of police brutality against minorities. The athlete played his final game in 2017 and has not received another contract offer despite visits with the Seattle Seahawks and Las Vegas Raiders.