Netflix has on its hands a nine hour documentary about Prince – but the late singer’s estate has blocked its release.
Netflix has officially cancelled Ezra Edelman’s Prince documentary following a period of uncertainty about the ultimate fate of the film. According to Showbiz 411, Edelman’s film “concentrated on Prince’s sex and drugs but not on his rock and roll,” and that was unpalatable to the singer’s estate who refused to sanction the film’s release.
Netflix announced the film’s cancellation with a press release, stating that it would be superceded by the production of a different documentary. The outlet’s Roger Friedman states this will be a very ‘sanitised’ version that meets the approval of the singer’s estate.
Here’s the statement:
“The Prince Estate and Netflix have come to a mutual agreement that will allow the estate to develop and produce a new documentary featuring exclusive content from Prince’s archive. As a result, the Netflix documentary will not be released.”
Edelman is the documentarian behind OJ: Made In America, an absorbing documentary series that explored the story beyond the celebrity flashbulbs of a murder that held American in thrall throughout the mid 1990s. The thought of Edelman’s nine-hour journey into Prince’s life not ever seeing the light of day is a pretty bitter pill to swallow: the singer died of an accidental drug overdose at the age of 57 and was renowned for his legendary romances and rock and roll lifestyle, almost as much as he was revered for his incredible music.
The disappointing news comes around the same time that a Prince jukebox musical has been announced, courtesy of Universal. Ryan Coogler is set to direct the film which will eschew the standard biopic format and instead go with the structure of Mamma Mia! or Greatest Days which were of course films that used the music of Abba and Take That respectively to tell original stories.
As fun as that might be, Edelman’s film is likely the one that many a Prince fan was hoping to see and it’s very unfortunate to see that it is officially dead, with no seeming chance of it being resurrected.
