Fleetwood Mac is set to receive its first fully authorized documentary

Fleetwood Mac is set to receive its first fully authorized documentary, directed by acclaimed filmmaker Frank Marshall for Apple Original Films.

The untitled feature will include new interviews with surviving core members Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham, Mick Fleetwood, and John McVie, along with never-before-seen footage and both new and archival interviews with the late Christine McVie, who passed away in 2022. A release date has yet to be announced.

Directed by Frank Marshall, a five-time Oscar nominee and recipient of the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, the project marks the first fully authorized documentary with participation from all surviving band members. Fleetwood Mac—comprising Mick Fleetwood, Christine McVie, John McVie, Stevie Nicks, and Lindsey Buckingham—is celebrated for iconic albums like Rumours and Tusk, as well as hits like “Rhiannon” and “Landslide.” Their turbulent relationships, often reflected in their music, added to their legendary status.

“I am fascinated by how this incredible story of enormous musical achievement came about. 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,” said director Marshall in an official statement.

Added producer Nicholas Ferrall, “Fleetwood Mac are a musical phenomenon, their alchemy almost beyond comprehension. White Horse is grateful and humbled by the extraordinary opportunity to produce a documentary that dives deep into both the talents of each band member individually and the magic that is Fleetwood Mac as a whole.”

Per today’s announcement, the film will follow “their fortuitous meeting in 1974” and see Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Christine McVie, Lindsey Buckingham, and Stevie Nicks “reflect on their uncompromising fifty-plus-year history, from their record-breaking recordings and tours — including never-before-seen footage, exclusive new interviews, and archival interviews of the late Christine McVie — through to today. The film will explore how the band’s trials and tribulations, personal resilience, and musical dexterity combined to create songs that have not only stood the test of time but are indeed timeless masterpieces.”

Marshall’s film promises to “take fans through the highs and lows of their brilliant career, illuminating the exceptional ingredients each member brought to the band’s uncommon alchemy — a musical union that sold more than 220 million records around the world. The documentary will explore what allowed this combination of artists to create singular musical work again and again, and what drew them back together and held them there when every possible pressure, both outside and inside the band, threatened to blow them apart.”

Director Frank Marshall produces through The Kennedy/Marshall Company with White Horse Pictures’ Nicholas Ferrall (“The Beatles: Eight Days A Week,” “Stax: Soulsville, U.S.A.”) and Jeanne Elfant Festa (“The Apollo,” “Lucy and Desi”), and Kennedy/Marshall’s Aly Parker (“The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend A Broken Heart,” “The Space Race”). White Horse’s Cassidy Hartmann executive produces with Kennedy/Marshall’s Tony Rosenthal. Diamond Doc’s Mark Monroe serves as writer and executive producer.

Fleetwood Mac Documentary Announced by Apple Original Films

BY JESSICA LYNCH

Billboard

Apple Original Films has unveiled plans for a new definitive documentary chronicling the legendary Fleetwood Mac. Directed by acclaimed filmmaker Frank Marshall, a five-time Academy Award nominee and winner of the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, the project marks the first fully authorized documentary about the band.

For the first time, Fleetwood Mac members will narrate their own extraordinary story, supported by exclusive interviews, archival footage, and unseen material, including tributes to the late Christine McVie.

The film promises to delve into Fleetwood Mac’s meteoric rise and the personal and professional dynamics that shaped their legacy. From the band’s formation in 1967 to their groundbreaking albums and record-breaking tours, the documentary will explore the unique alchemy between Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks, and Christine McVie that produced some of the most enduring music of the modern era.

Fleetwood Mac’s impact on the Billboard charts underscores their legendary status. The band has charted 25 songs on the Billboard Hot 100, with nine Top 10 hits, including their sole No. 1 single, “Dreams,” which spent 19 weeks on the chart during its original release in 1977. On the Billboard 200, the band has placed 30 albums, with four reaching the summit: Fleetwood Mac (1975), Rumours (1977), Mirage (1982) and The Dance (1997).

Their 1977 masterpiece Rumours achieved an extraordinary 31 weeks at No. 1 and remains one of the best-selling albums of all time, with over 40 million copies sold globally, with over 20 million copies being in the US alone.

In a statement, director Frank Marshall reflected on the band’s cultural significance, saying, “I am fascinated by how this incredible story of enormous musical achievement came about. 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.”

Producer Nicholas Ferrall added, “We are thrilled to continue our creative partnership with Frank and the talented team at Kennedy/Marshall. Fleetwood Mac are a musical phenomenon, their alchemy almost beyond comprehension. White Horse is grateful and humbled by the extraordinary opportunity to produce a documentary that dives deep into both the talents of each band member individually and the magic that is Fleetwood Mac as a whole. And to do this with the support and reach of Apple is quite wonderful.”

The documentary, which is yet to be titled, joins Apple Original Films’ prestigious catalog of projects, including the Academy Award-winning CODA and the Emmy-winning STILL: A Michael J. Fox Movie.

Stevie Nicks performed at the Michael J. Fox Foundation's yearly gala

Stevie Nicks Praises 'Lovely' Michael J. Fox amid His Parkinson's Journey: 'He Just Keeps Going'

The music icon performed at the Michael J. Fox Foundation's yearly gala on Saturday, Nov. 16

By Brenton Blanchet and Marisa Sullivan

People

Stevie Nicks is supporting an important cause and giving props to the "lovely" Michael J. Fox.

On Saturday, Nov. 16, the 76-year-old Fleetwood Mac musician stepped out in New York City for The Michael J. Fox Foundation's yearly A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Cure Parkinson’s gala, where she performed a few songs and raved about Fox — all while helping to celebrate his foundation's ongoing dedication to Parkinson's aid with research.

"He is here tonight. And he just keeps going," Nicks told PEOPLE of Fox, 63, who was diagnosed with Parkinson's in 1991 and went public with his diagnosis in 1998. "He got this pretty early. A long time ago. He’s had an amazing career, and he is the face of this. And when they asked me if I wanted to do this, I said of course I want to do it, you know?"

"He’s such a lovely guy. He could have just given up on all this kind of thing a long time ago and he didn’t," she added of his efforts, as Fox developed the MJFF in 2001. "And that’s so magical."

Nicks, who added that Fox is "an amazing guitar player," also posed for some photos on the Cipriani South Street carpet with Fox, his wife Tracy Pollan and fellow musician Maggie Rogers. During the event, the Back to the Future star wore a navy suit and brown paisley-print dress shirt, while Nicks opted for a stylish all-black look.

The gala, which salutes the MJFF's efforts throughout the year alongside patients, families, scientists and donors, was hosted by Denis Leary and featured some music from Nicks and Fox himself, who shared the stage alongside Rogers, 30.

Speaking with PEOPLE, Fox opened up at the event about maintaining his sense of humor, and how he works to ensure that it always shines through. As he explained, maintaining a darker sense of humor is actually “hard for me," adding, “I gotta keep it intact.” He also called his foundation's latest event “so exciting."

“I can’t believe — a lot of these people I’ve known for years and years — they’re so kind to me,” he said. “I think because they see an opportunity for a win, for a big advancement, and that’s what we’re working toward.”

The annual gala has raised $116 million toward Parkinson's disease research so far, with the foundation raising $2 billion total since its inception. Fox previously explained to CBS Mornings during a 2023 interview that his efforts seek to give a voice to the voiceless.

"They didn't have money, they didn't have a voice, and I thought, I could step in for these people and raise some hell," Fox said on the morning show. "It's not a cure. But it's a big spotlight on where we need to go, and what we need to focus on so we know we're on the right path, and we're very proud."

The MJFF's latest gala in N.Y.C. comes just months after their Nashville-based A Country Thing Happened on the Way to Cure Parkinson's event in April, which featured appearances from Sheryl Crow, Little Big Town and Jason Isbell.

EXCERPT An Intimate Biography of Christine McVie by Lesley-Ann Jones

Christine McVie: ‘The affairs dented my self-respect. There was something seedy about them’

Extracted from Songbird: An Intimate Biography of Christine McVie by Lesley-Ann Jones, published by Bonnier Books - AMAZON

Lesley-Ann Jones

One of the great misconceptions about Fleetwood Mac is how Rumours came about. The band’s 11th album was designed, you often hear, to chronicle the breakdowns between three couples: Mick Fleetwood and his wife Jenny Boyd, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, and John and Christine McVie. As such, it’s often referred to as a “journey album”, even a “concept album”. There was no pre-planned structure. Drugs, booze, illicit sex and affairs simply took their toll, and as their relationships fell apart, Christine, Stevie and Lindsey all separately brought to the table cathartic pieces that laid bare their own pain, anger, despair – and a little hope.

As they began recording Rumours at the Record Plant Studios in Sausalito, California in February 1976, the band’s producer Ken Caillat soon got the measure of those five distinct personalities. Mick, for instance, was the leader, and a control freak: he would go all night if he could, and sod the home life. Stevie was “the new girl”, she and boyfriend Lindsey having joined the band only in January 1975, who was infuriatingly precious about “her words”. Woe betide anyone who suggested an alteration.

But of all the dynamics within the band, the McVies’ was the most fascinating. Singer and keyboard player Christine was the reluctant member, having quit her own fledgling music career to marry their bassist John, intending to become a housewife and, hopefully, a mother. Drifting into the line-up because she happened to be around when they needed backing vocals here, a bit of piano there, she quickly became an essential component, contributing not only cohesive keyboard-playing and blues-inspired songwriting but her aching and irresistible voice.

It was obvious to anyone who was paying attention that John, Mick’s trusty collaborator, “loved” her – but he also had the most dangerous mistress: the bottle. Christine knew that John was a drinker when she married him. ‘He drank to cope,’ she said, ‘with who he was and who he wasn’t.’ Divorce in the late sixties was a dirty word, but they lasted only eight years. Having called time on their impossible marriage, Christine appeared resigned. She was, nonetheless, able to rise above her feelings: she was still willing to work with John, provided he controlled himself and behaved like a mature adult. He could do this when he was sober, but he lamented their distance when in his cups. He must have known as well as Christine did that they were beyond reconciliation.

He may also have been wracked by jealousy. For Christine was now, in 1976, having an affair with a Fleetwood Mac hand: their suave lighting director, Curry Grant. Their relationship provided light, no-strings relief from the shame and heartache of her ruined marriage. Although the couple lived together for about a year at her West Hollywood home, she regarded their set-up as a convenience and reflected its status in her song You Make Loving Fun.

Christine’s affair with Curry was not her first. She had, three years previously “got tangled up… as my mother would say” with Martin Birch, the band’s married sound engineer. At 25, he was five years her junior. John was aware, and played tit for tat, with a string of groupies. He drank even more. The atmosphere during recording sessions for their 1973 album Mystery to Me became unbearable.

Although Birch, a loyal servant, had engineered five albums for the band, Mick and John fired him. (Grant was also fired, but only for a few months, to teach him a lesson – he was indispensable.).

Christine could have walked away – she was only 30 years old, talented and in her prime. She might have divorced John, cut her losses and resumed her solo career. Chicken Shack, the second-division pre-Fleetwood Mac blues outfit with whom she famously scored a hit with the Etta James cover “I’d Rather Go Blind”, would have had her back in a beat. But Christine knew the magical harmonies that she, Stevie and Lindsey conjured together were too precious to throw away.

Christine’s hesitation to walk away from such a destructive situation, she explained to me in the 90s, had been to do with a fear of “losing everything”: “I wasn’t brave enough, frankly. There was still the stigma of being divorced in those days. My pop [her father] would have been very, very disappointed in me. I didn’t dare do that to him. In some ways, thank God my mother wasn’t still alive to know about it.

“Martin was never going to leave his wife. I loved him, but I didn’t want to be a mistress – horrible word – forever. It wasn’t as if I could leave John and go straight into a new set-up with Mart. That was never an option – he made that clear. Neither of us had money, it was still only wages. And I was, you know, John’s missus, not a person in my own right. There was no future in it.

“There was something seedy about [the affairs],” she went on, despondently, “that dented my self-respect. Maybe that was how the others made me feel. If they did, that would have been subliminal – nobody actually said anything, which in some ways made it worse. I didn’t like myself during that whole period. I sank very low.”

Maybe another part of her, I ventured, had thought it might work out with John eventually? “I don’t know,” Christine said. “I disliked my husband intensely for what he’d become, for what he was doing to me and to our marriage. We should have had kids by then. At least one, maybe. But in a way, thank God we didn’t. I could understand completely how things had gotten so bad. We hated the sight of each other. The booze numbed the pain, as did the drugs.

“Fleetwood Mac had become the mistress of us all. There was a sense by then that we could be on the verge of something, a breakthrough – dare I say it, the big time. The band had us by the short and curlies. She wasn’t going to let us go.”

Though the McVies’ union was over (and would be finalised in 1978), both remained married to the band. As for the Fleetwoods, Mick and Jenny had divorced in 1976, remarried four months later, but fell apart again almost immediately. Stevie and Lindsey had disintegrated. Stevie and Mick had a damaging affair. Now international superstars thanks to Rumours, 1977 became “their year”. They toured the world triumphantly, a travelling soap opera, knowing that nothing would ever be the same again. In 1979, they released their punk-infused album Tusk. That same year, Christine met and fell hopelessly for “The One”, Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson. The notorious, four-times-married, hell-raising womaniser was so wrong for her that she couldn’t let him go. She believed that she could fix him. He proposed.

Though when, given their punishing schedules, were they going to have time to get married? What about children? She’d had her fallopian tubes tied around the time of her divorce from John but she told me later that she’d looked into the possibility of reversing that.

Five years before her death, Christine would discuss her childlessness with Kirsty Young on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs. She now insisted that she had never wanted to be a mother.

Turning 40 proved devastating – her motherless status haunted her. Although she remarried in 1986, to Portuguese keyboard player Eddy Quintela, the marriage was a dud before it got off the ground.

The self-confessed ‘Daddy’s girl” was floored by her father Cyril’s death in July 1990. She found herself reliving the loss of her mother 22 years earlier, when she had swept her grief under the carpet. Her father’s passing rekindled that long-buried, unprocessed agony. “Losing Pop made me begin to look at my life differently,” she told me. “I could suddenly see that so much of it was pointless. Devoid of worth.

“A lot of [life],” she went on, “was going through the motions, and I was deferring actual living. For what? To satisfy the insatiable, ever-increasing demands of a record company? To keep the band going? To help keep the rest of them, the profligates, afloat? To make sure the fans carried on buying our records and seeing our shows, which in turn fed the record company? And there was that moment when I saw myself as a hamster in a wheel. I was rich beyond anything 15-year-old me could ever have imagined, ‘just’ from making music. But no amount of money, I knew, could buy me love or peace of mind. I woke up. I just didn’t want to live that lifestyle any more.”

Christine withdrew in 1990, and bought a manor house back in England. The band played on. Stevie Nicks was now immersed in a massive solo career. They regrouped for Bill Clinton’s presidential inauguration in January 1993, and four years later toured a live album, The Dance. After the New York performance at the Grammys, Christine left the band for good, blaming aviophobia, and moved into her renovated Kentish manor.

Rattling around in her huge home, lonely and depressed, she took up drinking and pills again. A fall down the stairs snapped her out of it. She could only go back. After therapy for fear of flying, she rejoined the Mac in 2014, 17 years after she had left. But her second coming would be short-lived. The health problems that blighted her final forays with the band ended her life in November 2022. She was 79.

Extracted from Songbird: An Intimate Biography of Christine McVie by Lesley-Ann Jones, published by Bonnier Books on Nov 14

Stevie Nicks and Jason Kelce Share "Maybe This Christmas" Duet

 JASON KELCE + STEVIE NICKS 

“Maybe This Christmas”

A Philly Special Christmas

“Maybe forgiveness will ask us to call, someone we love, someone we’ve lost for reasons we can’t quite recall, maybe this Christmas,”

Listen on Apple, or wherever you stream music

WATCH Stevie Nicks Performed "The Lighthouse" on Jimmy Kimmel Live

 Stevie Nicks performing The Lighthouse on Jimmy Kimmel Live

November 4, 2024

Stevie Nicks sits down with Mika Brzezinski on Morning Joe

 

Mika Brzezinski on Morning Joe (MSNBC) sat down with Stevie Nicks on Monday October 28th and interviewed her about her new song "The Lighthouse". Sheryl Crow joined as well. The interview airs Wednesday, October 30th. Morning Joe starts at 6am ET and it's a 3 hour morning show. Not sure what hour Stevie will be in.  Tune in if you can.