A nine-hour Netflix documentary about the life and music of Prince directed by Oscar-winner Ezra Edelman has been successfully blocked by Prince’s estate.
In a statement to Variety, Netflix confirmed that Edelman’s documentary will not be released on the platform: “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,” the statement read. “As a result, the Netflix documentary will not be released.”
Edelman won an Oscar and an Emmy for his five-part 2016 docuseries OJ: Made in America, which examined the the life, football career, and murder trial of OJ Simpson. Edelman then began working on the Prince documentary, reportedly spending over four years on it after cutting a multimillion dollar deal with Netflix and Comerica Bank, the interim executor of Prince’s estate. Edelman was reportedly given unprecedented access to Prince’s archives, a.k.a. the Vault, and was promised that Prince’s estate would not exert editorial control over his documentary. Though his original deal was to make a six-hour series, Edelman reportedly emerged with a nine-hour doc about Prince—which Prince’s estate is reportedly using to withhold the doc.
According to a report by Sasha Weiss at The New York Times, Edelman’s documentary also included some of Prince’s ex-girlfriends accusing the musician of physical and emotional abuse. Per Weiss, who saw Edelman’s film, Prince’s former girlfriend Jill Jones alleges in it that the singer physically assaulted her. The project also highlighted Prince’s dependence on pain medication—he died of an accidental fentanyl overdose in 2016—as well as his abusive childhood and his abandonment of his young w