Hulu’s Into the Void demanded the impossible: producing eight feature-length metal documentaries simultaneously — a feat that tested and transformed its creators. The guitarist plays on guitar in a dark room. Hands of a Guitar player playing the guitar. Low key
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Creating a single documentary is always a challenge. Developing and finishing eight of them at once sounds almost impossible, but that’s exactly what the team behind Hulu’s Into the Void did. Over two and a half years, showrunners Evan Husney and Jason Eisener, along with executive producer Danny Gabai, managed to produce eight almost-hour-long episodes that all stand on their own — with their individual stories, tones, and emotional cores — all while maintaining a consistent vision that celebrates the misunderstood world of heavy metal.
“It is pretty much like making eight documentaries, eight films at once,” Husney says. “Every episode into itself is its own beast.” Each of the installments covers a different story in the heavy metal space, from Judas Priest’s infamous trial to the onstage murder of Dimebag Darrell. While each one focuses on new names – some famous, others less well-known – they all have a truth to share, and a darkness to explore.
“There’s no formula,” Husney continues. “You could say that there’s a loose framework for how the episodes are put together, but they all have their own unique feel.” He added that when it came to stylizing each story, “Whatever the aesthetic of the band is, we try and work that into each episode.”
The sheer scope of the project required a small army of collaborators — producers, editors, cinematographers, and archival researchers all working in parallel. “You have to have a lot of different producers working on individual episodes,” Husney says. “Every reenactment felt true to the world of the band being featured, and that’s something we cared about from day one.”
While the logistics were complicated, the creative mission was simple: treat the subjects with humanity, which is not a given when it comes to the harder side of rock. Husney and Eisener refused to move forward with any story unless they had the full participation of the people involved. “If we don’t have family support, the series can tip over into being sensational,” Husney explains. That was a smart move on the part of the team, as so many of the tales told in the series deal with loss, pain, and grief – to exclude those who loved the musicians most, or to go against their wishes, may have alienated the very audience that would love this sort of program.
“We get more excited about the interviews with the family members… They paint a better picture than you would get from experts or fans,” Husney stated.
That patience came from lessons learned on Dark Side of the Ring, their earlier hit series about professional wrestling. “We learned how important it is to build trust,” Eisener says. “You’re dealing with people’s lives, their memories, and sometimes their grief. That’s not something you can rush,” he opined. “You have to earn their comfort and respect before you can tell their story properly.”
Danny Gabai, who worked with Husney long before Into the Void existed, remembers how that approach evolved. “Evan pitched me a version of this show all the way back in 2016,” he says. “We were working together at the time, and we were having drinks before the New York premiere of Lords of Chaos. We were talking about how great it would be to do a series about all sorts of real stories like this, where we could get the real people and try to understand them on a human level.”
At the time, the project didn’t get off the ground, but after the success of Dark Side of the Ring, Gabai says it was clear that the team had proven their storytelling method. “After Dark Side became a hit, we started talking about what to do next,” he says. “When they brought up this idea again, it was obvious that this was something they were meant to make. And I knew they had the team to pull it off.”
When Husney and Eisener finally took the project to Hulu, it found an unlikely champion. The streamer “bought it in the room,” Husney says, recalling their pitch to a senior Disney executive. “There was something about that meeting where it just felt like everything clicked right away,” Eisener adds. “We were all on the same page. We were going to make the show because we cared and because we were passionate about the subject matter.”
Gabai says that moment was a turning point. “It was amazing,” he says. “You don’t always get to pitch to someone who understands your world, but in this case, the executive we met with was a metal fan. He knew the stories, he knew the history, and that made the difference. He saw that this wasn’t just a niche project — it was something that had real cultural importance.”
Once the show was greenlit, the real work began. “There was a lot of rolling up your sleeves and getting in there,” Husney says. “You’re working on all eight episodes simultaneously, coordinating interviews, chasing archives, managing postproduction — all at once.” Eisener adds that the scale forced them to work differently than ever before. “Every day was chaos in the best way,” he says. “We’d be in the middle of finishing one episode while starting production on another. It was like running eight marathons at once.” Few filmmakers or TV producers can understand the exact difficulties the Into the Void team faced – even those developing multiple episodes of one program simultaneously, as a docuseries, especially one based on a subject matter that needed to be handled delicately, is a different kind of monster.
The experience was both exhausting and transformative. “For a lot of the stories I worked on personally,” Husney says, “you’re embedding yourself in that world and getting to know the people involved. You’re going to their houses, listening to records with them. You’re really getting to know these people.” Eisener agrees. “It’s not transactional,” he says. “These are relationships you build for life. You can’t tell these stories without connecting to the people you’re telling them about.”
Gabai says that commitment is what makes Into the Void feel different from most music documentaries. “A lot of docs are made quickly — they’re built around existing footage or celebrity names,” he explains. “This was a two-and-a-half-year labor of love that required real access and trust. It’s a massive achievement.”
For the filmmakers, it also fulfilled a lifelong dream. “The 13-year-old me would not even believe this,” Husney says. “To come full circle with your childhood like that — it’s a dream.” Eisener comments, “We’ve spent our careers trying to shine a light on subcultures that people misunderstand. Wrestling was one. Metal is another. If people walk away from this show seeing those worlds differently, then we did our job.”
Gabai agrees. “That’s what this series is about — taking something people think they know and showing them the truth behind it,” he says. “It’s not just about the music. It’s about humanity.”