New SoulCycle Doc Puts Co-Founder’s Ouster Back in the Spotlight

The documentary, set for release in December, features SoulCycle co-founder Ruth Zukerman’s account of being pushed out of the brand she helped build

The documentary genre has a signature move: A subject walks into frame, sits down and asks, a little uncertainly, “Are we really doing this?”

“Spin Wars,” a documentary about the rise of SoulCycle, Flywheel and Peloton, arrives in December to revisit boutique fitness’ betrayals, celebrity fans and a founding fight.

And its central figure, SoulCycle co-founder Ruth Zukerman, seems more than ready to do this.

Greenwich Entertainment has acquired North American rights to the film, the directorial debut of Philip Byron, Deadline reported. “Spin Wars” premiered at the Tribeca Festival in June and recently screened at the Hamptons International Film Festival. 

It also features Marion Roaman, a Peloton co-founder, and the distributor describes it as a “high-energy documentary” that charts “the improbable rise of indoor cycling and the dark side of ‘mind, body, soul’ culture.”

Zukerman says in the film that she was blindsided when fellow co-founders Elizabeth Cutler and Julie Rice told her in a meeting that she was no longer a partner, Page Six reported. She said she signed an agreement after her departure, though “the language was a bit loose.”

At the Hamptons screening, Zukerman explained why she’s speaking out now. 

“I kept it close to the vest, and as time went on, you know, we get older, and we start to look at life a little differently,” she said, according to Page Six. “I’m 68. I literally had a thought at one point two years ago … ‘Why am I not talking about this?’”

“I would regret keeping this story secret,” she said. “It’s been very cathartic, obviously, to finally tell the story.”

It isn’t the first time she’s addressed her exit. Zukerman wrote about it in her 2018 memoir, “Riding High: How I Kissed SoulCycle Goodbye, Co-Founded Flywheel, and Built the Life I Always Wanted,” though Page Six noted she had never shared this much detail.

In a 2023 essay for HCM, she wrote that the three founders never signed a partnership agreement despite her repeated requests, and that once SoulCycle took off, Cutler and Rice decided they no longer needed her as a partner but suggested she stay on as an instructor. A single mother of two at the time, she did. She revisited the split at length in March on The JWE’s “Inspired to Lead” podcast, in an episode titled “The Real Story Behind SoulCycle: Ruth Zukerman & the $90 Million Lesson.”

SoulCycle, now owned by Equinox, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The boutique cycling brand looks little like the brand “Spin Wars” remembers. CEO Evelyn Webster announced in June that she was leaving after nearly six years to lead podcast company Audiochuck.

Riders have reported closures of local studios, including in Walnut Creek and La Jolla, California. The brand reportedly lost $350 million in 2020 amid pandemic shutdowns, according to Front Office Sports, and closed nearly 25% of its locations in 2022. SoulCycle’s website currently lists 52 studios in the U.S. and one in London. It has not publicly named a new CEO.

Rice and Cutler stepped down from SoulCycle in 2016 and went on to launch Peoplehood, a guided group conversation practice, which WeightWatchers later acquired while naming Rice its first chief experience officer.

The founder story isn’t only history, either. 

Y7 founder Sarah Larson Levey has said she was stripped of operational control of the yoga brand she built after its acquirer, FitLab, handed operations to another company. She stepped away from the company this summer. Y7 closed all of its studios in September. 

Solidcore founder Anne Mahlum, who sold her company in 2023, told Athletech News this month that she has spent around $123,000 of her own money to cover eight weeks of unpaid wages for Y7 workers.

“Spin Wars” will be released on Amazon and Apple TV on Dec. 22.