Sex Pistols TV Series Headed To Hulu, Will Premiere In May

The highly-anticipated biopic miniseries about the Sex Pistols will be available to U.S. viewers only on Hulu starting May 31.

The Danny Boyle-directed series, Pistol, is based on guitarist Steve Jones' 2017 memoir, Lonely Boy: Tales From a Sex Pistol. It documents the band's whirlwind rise from working class London to iconic status as one of the most feared/revered punk bands of the late-'70s.

"The Pistols were the fountainhead that changed [society]," Boyle said in a statement release on Twitter via FX Networks. "They gave a sense of timelessness. Nothing ever seemed to be the same again.

Pistol's logline reads: "This is the story a band of spotty, noisy, working-class kids with 'no future,' who shook the boring, corrupt establishment to its core, threatened to bring down the government and changed music and culture forever."

The cast includes Toby Wallace as Jones; Anson Boon as singer Johnny Rotten; Christian Lees as first bassist Glen Matlock; Louis Partridge as later bassist Sid Vicious; Jacob Slater as drummer Paul Cook; Sydney Chandler as Pretenders singer Chrissie Hynde; Emma Appleton as Vicious' girlfriend Nancy Spungen; and Thomas Brodie-Sangster as band manager Malcolm McLaren.

Frontman John Lydon (a.k.a. Johnny Rotten) recalled the height of Sex Pistols fervor as a "hell on Earth" in an interview last fall noting how he was at one time in danger of being charged with treason for his lyrics.

"And you go ‘Ooh, ha ha’, but that carried a death penalty! For words! A few soppy little pop songs like 'Anarchy In The U.K.' [laughs] and you can be dead," Lydon recalled. Off with his head!"

Lydon is the lone member of the band to oppose the television series (which also had support from the estate of Vicious). He complained that he was never given an opportunity to participate in the "watered down" story and later lost a lawsuit to block the show from airing.

Jones and Cook argued that they had always been supportive of Lydon's Pistols-related projects; this miniseries was an important project for them. They added in another statement that Lydon's "claims to be the only band member of consequence [were] hard to take."