Apple TV's long-awaited documentary about Fleetwood Mac is finally ready to hit the small screen. Fleetwood Mac: The Chain, which was announced in November 2024, will premiere on January 29, 2027, and features contributions from Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, the late Christine McVie, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks.
The release is timed to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the band's best-selling Rumours album – which came out on February 4, 1977 – and is named after The Chain, the only song on the album to be credited to all five members.
The film is directed by Frank Marshall, who also worked on The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart (2020), Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story (2022) and The Beach Boys (2024).
"I am fascinated by how this incredible story of enormous musical achievement came about,” said Marshall in 2024. "Fleetwood Mac somehow managed to merge their often chaotic and almost operatic personal lives into their own tale in real-time, which then became legend. This will be a film about the music and the people who created it."
The film tells the story of Fleetwood Mac from the point when Mick Fleetwood invited Lindsey Buckingham – and then Stevie Nicks – to join the band after being played Frozen Love from their Buckingham Nicks album at Sound City Studio in Los Angeles in late 1974.
"Lindsey’s style was so stunning and unique," Fleetwood told Rolling Stone. "It was what hit me first, and it hit me hard. That hour and a half spent in Sound City changed everything."
The dramatic story of the band's pre-Rumours years, which include the loss of guitarists Peter Green and Jeremy Spencer (the first to mental decline, the second to the cult organisation Children of God), the firing and subsequent destitution of guitarist Danny Kirwan, dwindling popularity, a break-up in 1973 and the strange story of the "Fake Fleetwood Mac", will have to wait for another day.
