E! may have given us a peek into the Playboy Mansion with the Girls Next Door, but now it’s Hugh Hefner‘s turn to face the cameras.
Amazon announced Thursday that it’s partnered with Hef for a 13-part docuseries about his life and the rise of the magazine that rattled American culture. It’s called American Playboy: The Hugh Hefner Story, and will premiere in 2017 exclusively on Amazon Prime Video in the U.S., U.K., Japan, Germany, and Austria.
The series will start in the post-World War II era, and follow Hef through the magazine’s launch in 1953 all the way up to today. Hefner also happens to be a dedicated archivist, so the production team reportedly has over 17,000 hours of footage and 2,600 scrapbooks of source material to work with (in addition to six decades’ worth of Playboy issues). The docuseries marks the first time Hefner has offered any filmmaker access to his full archive.
Amazon Unzips Docuseries ‘American Playboy: The Hugh Hefner Story’ https://t.co/BhZRrgzIUg pic.twitter.com/GyCU8Xe5CG
— Deadline Hollywood (@DEADLINE) August 11, 2016
You don’t keep records that meticulous if you’re not planning to do something with them eventually, but the 90-year-old publisher says he was waiting for the perfect opportunity to come along.
“It has been a long road in finding the right partners to tell the full story of Playboy as it has unfolded over these past 63 years,” Hefner said in a statement. “And I believe we have found them in the collaborative team of Stephen David Entertainment and Amazon.”
No official release date has been announced.
H/T Variety