Nearly two years after being announced, Frank Marshall’s Fleetwood Mac documentary has an official title and release date. Fleetwood Mac: The Chain arrives on Jan. 29, 2027, via Apple TV.
The film is the first fully-authorized documentary by the band, and the release is timed to the 50th anniversary of Rumours, which hit shelves on Feb. 4, 1977. Fittingly, it’s named after “The Chain,” a.k.a. the only song in the Fleetwood Mac discography that credits each member: Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks, Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, and the late Christine McVie, who died in 2022.
Fleetwood Mac: The Chain traces the band’s history, from when Buckingham and Nicks joined the band on New Year’s Eve in December 1974 to the present. It boasts previously unseen footage and new interviews with the core members, digging deep into their catalog, their immediate rise to superstardom and rock & roll excess, and their highly publicized relationships and ultimate love for each other.
“I am fascinated by how this incredible story of enormous musical achievement came about,” Marshall said 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.”
Marshall has five Oscar nominations to his name, and is a recipient of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award. His recent music documentaries include 2020’s The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart, 2024’s The Beach Boys, the upcoming Pete Townshend: Behind Blue Eyes, and more. The Chain is produced by the Kennedy/Marshall Company with White Horse Pictures’ Nigel Sinclair, Nicholas Ferrall, Jeanne Elfant Festa, and Kennedy/Marshall’s Aly Parker.
The documentary’s title and official release date arrives a year after Buckingham and Nicks reissued their 1973 debut Buckingham Nicks, which had been out of print for decades. It was then revealed that the two are back on speaking terms, after Buckingham was fired from the band in 2018 (in 2024, Nicks told Rolling Stone the two had briefly interacted at McVie’s memorial a year prior). Buckingham has been quietly teasing big plans for next year, which might be the documentary in itself, or some form of a reunion.
“Stevie and I are talking all the time now,” Buckingham said last August. “Next year should be a pretty interesting year, because I think quite a few things will reveal themselves.”
