Director Slams Prince’s Estate for Scrapping His 9-Hour Doc and Says They’re ‘Afraid’ of the Late Icon’s ‘Humanity’
“This is reflective of Prince himself, who was notoriously one of the most famous control freaks in the history of artists,” said director Ezra Edelman
The director of Netflix’s scrapped Prince documentary is speaking out.
After the streaming service and Prince’s estate announced Ezra Edelman’s long-in-the-works film would be shelved in favor of a different documentary on the “Purple Rain” singer last month, the Oscar-winning filmmaker reacted to the news in a March 4 appearance on the Pablo Torre Finds Out podcast.
“It’s a joke,” declared Edelman, 50, whom The New York Times previously reported was approached by Netflix in 2019 to make the film and told he and the streamer would have the final cut, while Prince’s estate would have the chance to review footage for factual accuracy.
“The estate, here’s the one thing they were allowed to do: Check the film for factual inaccuracies. Guess what? They came back with a 17-page document full of editorial issues — not factual issues,” he said. “You think I have any interest in putting out a film that is factually inaccurate?”
Edelman claimed the estate’s concerns are in regards to “who has control” over the contents of the documentary.
“This is reflective of Prince himself, who was notoriously one of the most famous control freaks in the history of artists,” he added. “The irony being that Prince was somebody who fought for artistic freedom, who didn’t want to be held down by Warner Bros., who he believed was stifling his output. And now, in this case — by the way, I’m not Prince, but I worked really hard making something, and now my art’s being stifled and thrown away.”
He expressed feeling as though Netflix is “afraid” of the “Let’s Go Crazy” artist’s “humanity,” adding that it’s “galling” to witness “the short-sightedness of a group of people whose interest is their own bottom line.”
BERTRAND GUAY/AFP VIA GETTY
“The lawyer who runs the estate essentially said he believed that this would do generational harm to Prince,” said Edelman. “In essence, that the portrayal of Prince in this film — what people learn about him — would deter younger viewers and fans, potentially, from loving Prince. They would be turned off.”
He added, “This is, I think, the big issue here: I’m like, ‘This is a gift — a nine-hour treatment about an artist that was, by the way, f—ing brilliant.’ Everything about who you believe he is is in this movie. You get to bathe in his genius. And yet you also have to confront his humanity, which he, by the way, in some ways, was trapped in not being able to expose because he got trapped in his own myth about who he was to the world, and he had to maintain it.”
In 2023, The New York Times sent reporter Sasha Weiss to a screening of Edelman’s film, which she described as a detailed portrait of Prince’s music and career, including the darker sides of his personal life, which he kept private until his death in 2016 at age 57 of an accidental overdose. The documentary featured both vault footage and interviews with more than 70 people.
KEVIN MAZUR/WIREIMAGE
The film reportedly touched on the devastating loss of Prince’s infant son with ex-wife Mayte Garcia and his difficult childhood — and featured an interview with a former girlfriend who alleged physical abuse. One scene saw his ex-partner Jill Jones recounting a 1984 evening when punched her in the face repeatedly, per the outlet.
Netflix and Prince’s estate announced the film would be shelved in favor of something different on Feb. 7.
“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,” a statement read.
Related Articles
Follow Us
Prince documentary filmmaker Ezra Edelman seethes over the scrapped Netflix project: ‘It’s a joke’
“I’m not Prince, but I worked really hard making something, and now my art’s being stifled and thrown away.”
THEO WARGO/GETTY
Ezra Edelman compares his nine-hour Prince documentary canceled by Netflix to Indiana Jones’ prized Ark of the Covenant: lost to the world.
“The image I’ve had in my head is the last shot of Raiders of the Lost Ark: of just a huge warehouse somewhere in Netflix, a crate just, like, put away,” Edelman, who won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature for 2016’s O.J.: Made in America, said Tuesday on the Pablo Torre Finds Out podcast.
The director made it clear that he’s a fan of “The Purple One,” who died in 2016, but he also wanted to show the “Little Red Corvette” singer’s “humanity.” The project, which featured interviews with more than 70 people and included descriptions of physical and mental abuse in his relationships, according to New York Times Magazine Deputy Editor Sasha Weiss, who is one of the few people to have seen the film.
“Like most Americans who grew up in the 1980s, I had an image of Prince emblazoned in my mind: wonderfully strange; a gender-bending, dreamy master of funk,” Weiss wrote in her article “The Prince We Never Knew” published in September 2024. “He flouted and floated above all categories and gave permission to generations of kids to do the same. Edelman’s film deepened those impressions, while at the same time removing Prince’s many veils. This creature of pure sex and mischief and silky ambiguity, I now saw, was also dark, vindictive and sad. This artist who liberated so many could be pathologically controlled and controlling. The film is sometimes uncomfortable to watch. But then, always, there is relief: the miracle of Prince’s music.”
When Edelman joined the project, the outlet reported, he was assured that he and the streamer would have final say on the content of the documentary, while Prince’s estate “could review the film for factual accuracy.”
Edelman claims that’s not what happened.
BERTRAND GUAY/AFP VIA GETTY
“It’s a joke. The estate had — here’s the one thing they were allowed to do: Check the film for factual inaccuracies. Guess what? They came back with a 17-page document full of editorial issues — not factual issues,” Edelman told Torre, who has also seen the film. “You think I have any interest in putting out a film that is factually inaccurate?”
“The lawyer who runs the estate essentially said he believed that this would do generational harm to Prince,” Edelman continued. “In essence, that the portrayal of Prince in this film — what people learn about him — would deter younger viewers and fans, potentially, from loving Prince. They would be turned off.”
Netflix and Prince’s estate released a joint statement last month with their reasoning: “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 said this fight is one that Prince would have had.
“This is reflective of Prince himself, who was notoriously one of the most famous control freaks in the history of artists. The irony being that Prince was somebody who fought for artistic freedom, who didn’t want to be held down by Warner Bros., who he believed was stifling his output,” Edelman said. “I’m not Prince, but I worked really hard making something, and now my art’s being stifled and thrown away.”
Sign up for Entertainment Weekly’s free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.
The filmmaker truly believed he had created something fans would embrace, a candid picture of an iconic entertainer.
“I’m like, ‘This is a gift — a nine-hour treatment about an artist that was, by the way, f—ing brilliant.’ Everything about who you believe he is is in this movie. You get to bathe in his genius. And yet you also have to confront his humanity, which he, by the way, in some ways, was trapped in not being able to expose because he got trapped in his own myth about who he was to the world, and he had to maintain it.”
EW has reached out to Netflix for comment.
Related Articles
Follow Us
Ezra Edelman: Audiences Are Being Fed Estate-Approved ‘Propaganda Love Letter’ Celeb Docs
Director Ezra Edelman is speaking out against the reign of estate-approved (and in his opinion, therefore sanitized) celebrity documentaries. The Oscar- and Emmy-winning “O.J: Made In America” director said during a recent appearance on the “Pablo Torre Finds Out” podcast in the below video that Netflix was “afraid” to debut his six-part, nine-hour docuseries about “Purple Rain” singer Prince amid disputes with the late musician’s estate.
The New York Times previously reported that Edelman’s long-gestating docuseries was blocked by Prince’s estate. The project, titled “The Book of Prince,” was officially canceled in early February after Edelman spent five years making it. Now, instead of “The Book of Prince,” Netflix and the Prince estate are working on a new, separate documentary.
“I’m not Prince, but I worked really hard making something, and now my art is being stifled and thrown away,” Edelman said of his shelved docuseries. “This is the thing I just find galling. I mean, I can’t get past this, of the short-sightedness of a group of people whose interest is their own bottom line. They’re afraid of [Prince’s] humanity. The lawyer who runs this estate essentially said he believed that this would do generational harm to Prince. In essence, that the portrayal of Prince in this film, what people learn about him, would deter younger viewers and fans, potentially, from loving Prince. They would be turned off.”
Edelman is believes that audiences will now receive a censored version of Prince’s life story. To him, that will “not [be] a documentary. … It’s going to be a hagiographic propaganda love letter to Prince the artist,” Edelman said of the other estate-approved documentary project in lieu of his own series. “Are you going to learn anything about Prince? I doubt it. Are you going to learn anything dark about Prince? I doubt it. Are you going to learn anything complicating about Prince? I doubt it.”
Edelman clarified that his docuseries was not as damning to the late artist’s estate as reports made it seem. “This isn’t, by the way, like R. Kelly and it’s like we already know what he’s guilty of and you’re just exposing really horrid truths that people need to know because this guy’s got to go down. This isn’t that,” Edelman said. “But people were defensive in terms of it, as if [Prince] were that. The relationship is about how much people love Prince. And it’s like, so who wants this? Like, who wants a microscopic accounting of someone’s life, when some of it is going to be a little a little scummy at times? But the whole point of it is the journey. And the whole point of it was actually reflecting a journey that he went through.”
“The Book of Prince” did, however, include allegations that Prince was emotionally and physically abusive, as the artist’s protégé and former partner Jill Jones said in the docuseries. Jones starred in Prince’s films “Purple Rain” and “Graffiti Bridge.” Jones claimed in “The Book of Prince” that Prince punched her in the face “over and over” again, among other alleged incidents.
Edelman believes the inclusion of the accusations against Prince may be, in part, why the series was scrapped by the legal hand of the estate, even though Edelman said there were no “factual issues” with the content. Netflix and Edelman had final cut of the docuseries, which used archival materials and new interviews. The Prince estate was allowed to review the documentary for factual accuracy.
“People had issues with how he treated people. He was emotionally abusive. He was physically abusive. The point is, this all weighed on him,” Edelman said. “But the way that certain people, maybe the estate, is characterizing the film [as] bad or negative … I mean, whatever. It’s a joke. The estate had to check the film for factual inaccuracies. Guess what? They came back with a 17-page document full of editorial issues, not factual issues. Do you think I have any interest in putting on a film that is factually inaccurate?”
And in turn, audiences will have to settle for the “slop” of a celebrity-sanctioned documentary, something which diminishes the rising genre as a whole. (According to Parrot Analytics, the number of biographical documentary series on streamers increased by 373 percent between January 2020 and July 2024.)
“It’s like they’re being served slop, and they’re getting used to that fact. … I think that’s the bigger issue,” Edelman said. “This film about Prince, to me, it’s a full meal. And it’s not something you can just tear through. It’s tough at times.”
He continued, “Right now, we live in a culture and in a documentary universe, and in some ways in a journalistic universe, where the subject gets to dictate who they are to everybody. And that is not the way that the Fourth Estate was set up. So, my issue is that in trading for access, you now have a lot of companies and filmmakers making deals with the subject, sanitizing their story and or their image, that to me, it’s like, of course, it serves them. I think the exercise is very hard. I think the danger and the problem I’m finding is that what’s the compromise? Of course, there are movies being made with subjects that have some say in how the story is told or are getting paid for the access, which to me is a no-no, and gets to be a producer of their own story. What happens that these streamers or whoever the distributors are, they get a film about whomever.”
Edelman is doubtful that his “The Book of Prince” will ever be released. “[I don’t] feel like getting sued,” he said. “The image I’ve had in my head is the last show of ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark,’ of just a huge warehouse somewhere in Netflix, a crate and just like put away. … Maybe the whole saga has officially concluded and I lost, and this happens to be such a sort of extreme high profile episode in documentary filmmaking.”
Prince died in 2016 without a will. His estate is divided in half, and the executors who originally greenlit Edelman’s Prince documentary are not the current executors who blocked “The Book of Prince.”
Puck first shared in July 2024 that Netflix was doing “damage control” with Prince’s estate due to the length of the series and its content. Variety later cited an unnamed source that claimed “The Book of Prince” was “dead in the water” due to its “sensationalized” inaccuracies about Prince. The Prince estate apparently was also considering withholding music rights, as noted in July 2024.
After “The Book of Prince” was announced to be canceled in February 2025, the estate tweeted, “The vault has been freed” along with a Prince quote reading, “Despite everything, no one can dictate who you are to other people.”
Netflix shared a statement along with the Prince estate to announce a new documentary in development. “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 reads. “As a result, the Netflix documentary will not be released.”
In the meantime, audiences can watch Prince back on the big screen: His 1984 rock drama “Purple Rain” will return to theaters for one-night only event on March 5, exclusively at Dolby Cinema.
By providing your information, you agree to our Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy. We use vendors that may also process your information to help provide our services. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA Enterprise and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
By providing your information, you agree to our Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy. We use vendors that may also process your information to help provide our services. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA Enterprise and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
