Brian Gewirtz Discusses How 'Tales From The Territories' Series Came Together

[Liz]

On August 8, Vice TV announced its new series "Tales From The Territories."

The docuseries, which will focus on the territory days of wrestling, is being produced by the "Dark Side of the Ring" team along with Dwayne Johnson (The Rock) and Dany Garcia's Seven Bucks Productions.

Speaking to Vice TV, Brian Gewirtz, who is a former WWE head writer and now works with The Rock at Seven Bucks Productions, discussed how the project came about.

"I was always a big fan of documentaries. I remember my friends wanting to see, you know, Lethal Weapon 2, and I wanted to see the new Errol Morris movie. And Dwayne's a big documentary fan too. He tweeted about Dark Side of the Ring, and obviously, he's a huge fan of it, and I was like, "I like that show too. Let's meet Evan and Jason, the creators of that show." We clicked right away, because we're all huge, huge, wrestling fans, and we're all huge documentary fans," he said. "After talking to Dwayne about it, we were like, "How do we take the success of Dark Side of the Ring and translate it into another docuseries but not focus on the dark of it?" There's also so many great, crazy, fun stories, especially with the territories in the 70s and 80s. Each region had its own empire, basically, and so many of these amazing stories are only known within wrestling circles and inner circles. With Dwayne having his dad and his grandfather as wrestlers, and having been both in the Hall of Fame, and his grandmother being the first female promoter in Hawaii, he is instilled with the stories of the territories."

Gewirtz continued by saying, "I helped Evan and Jason based on my relationships with some of the wrestlers. I reached out to one of my heroes and one of Dwayne's heroes as well, Bret "The Hitman" Hart, because we needed him if we were going to do an episode on the Calgary Stampede territory. And part of the reason he wanted to come on the show was because we got Abdullah the Butcher to be on the show—there's not nearly enough television shows with Abdullah the Butcher talking. There's so many legends that I was fortunate enough to have a relationship with at WWE, and then to see them outside the WWE environment without restrictions... I was lucky enough also to be at the tapings of those roundtables. Yes, I'm on headset, and I have a run sheet in front of me and everything, but for the most part, I'm just a fan leaning back and being like, 'This is so cool.'"

The series will debut on October 4 at 10 p.m. ET.

Fans can view the trailer for the show in the video below.