Manchester United to Get 'The Crown'-Style TV Drama Series

Manchester United have agreed a deal with North American production company Lionsgate to create a dramatised retelling of the club’s history. The production remains in a developmental phase and has not yet been written or sold to a broadcaster or streaming platform but the concept is similar in style to The Crown, a six-season historical drama series on Netflix which chronicled the life of the British monarch Queen Elizabeth II. Lionsgate, a major studio which produces and distributes movies and TV shows, is the home of major franchises including The Hunger Games, John Wick and Twilight, and has a track record of sports-themed productions, including movies such as Warrior (2011) and Draft Day (2014). Lionsgate is also working on a project about the baseball gambling scandal surrounding Ippei Mizuhara, the former interpreter for Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani. According to multiple people familiar with the conversations, who all spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their positions, an agreement has been reached which will see United receive a guaranteed sum in the low multi-million pounds in the event the show is produced and sold. Future royalties will be shared between the club and Lionsgate, with the value growing based on the number of seasons and episodes made and the size of any deal that is agreed. The British television writer and director Jed Mercurio — who has created hit UK TV series such as Bodyguard and Line of Duty — has been involved in conversations about the project. He is a childhood United fan. Both United and Lionsgate declined to comment for this report, while Mercurio was approached via his production company HTM Television, but had not replied by the point of publication. It is not known at this stage which periods will be covered but United’s history is not short of storylines that would appeal to both avid fans and a more casual audience. The most tragic came with the Munich Air Disaster in 1958, when 23 people, including eight United players, died after the team’s plane crashed in Germany on the way back from a European Cup tie against Red Star Belgrade. United’s manager at the time Sir Matt Busby, who was left seriously injured, subsequently rebuilt his team, leading them to a first European Cup final triumph in 1968. United went 26 years without winning a domestic league title until Sir Alex Ferguson turned them into English football’s dominant force, winning 13 Premier Leagues between 1993 and 2013, five FA Cups and two Champions Leagues, peaking with the treble of all three in the 1998-99 season. Along the way, United developed into one of the planet’s foremost sporting brands and boasted some of its most famous footballers, from George Best, Sir Bobby Charlton and Denis Law in the 1960s, through to Eric Cantona, David Beckham, Cristiano Ronaldo, Roy Keane and Wayne Rooney under Ferguson. United’s identity has also been shaped by local talents, with stars such as Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs and Marcus Rashford being nurtured at the club’s youth academy. While United have enjoyed huge success, they have also had periods of startling under-performance. They were last relegated from the top flight in 1974 and have not won the Premier League title since 2013, the year Ferguson retired as manager. United have also been the subject of highly controversial ownership changes, with the American Glazer family, who also own the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the NFL, acquiring the club in a highly leveraged takeover in 2005. In 2023, the Glazers sold a minority stake to British billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who has overseen radical changes and staff cuts since being granted the keys to United’s sporting operation. At this stage, it is not known the extent to which United have negotiated broad editorial control and approval over the dramatised series. In July, The Athletic revealed that United had withdrawn from secret talks over a record-breaking Amazon Prime access-all-areas documentary chronicling their 2025-26 season after concluding it could distract from the progress of the first team. United spent several months negotiating a deal with Amazon towards the end of the previous campaign. Amazon’s offer was significantly more than £10million ($13.64m) and would have been its largest payment to a club for an All or Nothing series, having previously broadcast editions on fellow Premier League sides Arsenal, Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur, plus several NFL teams. Despite United’s most senior executives being across the discussions, the plug was pulled following the Europa League final defeat by Tottenham in May, largely because their then head coach Ruben Amorim was not comfortable with the potential intrusion. Aspects of the commercial agreement and the time pressure to arrange matters ahead of the new season were factors, too. In April 2023, The Athletic revealed that United were in discussions with the U.S. entertainment platform Disney with a view to striking a multi-million-dollar deal to create documentaries about the club, primarily focused on the Ferguson era. United and the Disney+ streaming service were in talks over a documentary that would have included substantial interview time with Ferguson, plus access to archive footage and club ambassadors such as former captain Bryan Robson and goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel. Both Ferguson and his former players would have needed to formally agree to that project and a deal was never struck. Ferguson ceased to be an ambassador at the club in 2024, when Ratcliffe’s INEOS empire continued its cost-cutting programme by ending a multi-million-pound annual commitment to him. In 2024, Amazon Prime Video’s streaming service released a three-part 25th anniversary docuseries about United’s treble-winning season, featuring interviews with Ferguson and members of the club’s famed Class of ’92 academy generation, such as Beckham, Scholes and Gary Neville. It was not negotiated with the club, and United did not directly benefit from it financially.