There has been rampant speculation about the status of the Prince documentary at Netflix, which was widely reported to have stalled due to disagreements between Netflix, director Ezra Edelman, and the Prince Estate over factual content in the production. Yesterday, Netflix and the Prince Estate ended this speculation through the following joint statement:
“The Prince Estate and Netflix have reached an agreement where the Estate will develop and release a Prince documentary and other exclusive content from Prince’s Vault archive. As a result, Netflix will not be releasing a Prince documentary.”
The Prince documentary has been under development for many years. Following the death of Prince Rogers Nelson in 2016, his estate was managed for many years by Comerica Bank & Trust, which sought to monetize Prince’s considerable assets in order to pay off the Estate’s expenses while his estate wound its way through the probate court. As part of these efforts, Comerica entered into an agreement with Netflix, on behalf of the Estate, to produce a documentary series on Prince’s life, which was first reported on in 2018. Netflix was given extensive access to Prince’s archives to produce the documentary.
Prince’s longtime attorney and trusted confidant, L. Londell McMillan, addressed the news on X:
In August 2022, the probate court distributed Prince’s assets to two court-approved ownership groups, Prince Legacy LLC and Primary Wave Music. After Prince Legacy and Primary Wave took over co-management of the Estate, they viewed a cut of the documentary and became involved in a dispute with Netflix and Ezra Edelman over the existence of factual inaccuracies, mischaracterizations, and the sensationalization of certain events. After a number of “unnamed sources” began disclosing these discussions to the media, there was widespread reporting starting in July 2024 concerning this dispute and the fate of the documentary. These sources claimed that, in addition to the dispute over the factual content, the Estate had shut down Netflix’s access to Prince’s archives, and that Edelman had delivered a nine-hour documentary to Netflix where the agreement only granted music rights sufficient for a six-hour documentary.
In September 2024, Prince Legacy and Primary Wave issued the following joint statement:
Those with the responsibility of carrying out Prince’s wishes shall honor his creativity and genius. We are working to resolve matters concerning the documentary so that his story may be told in a way that is factually correct and does not mischaracterize or sensationalize his life. We look forward to continuing to share Prince’s gifts and celebrate his profound and lasting impact on the world.
Yesterday’s announcement indicates that Netflix and the Estate have resolved their disputes and that the parties are, respectively, moving on from this troubled project. While the Estate will be pushing ahead with a definitive Prince documentary, it will be doing so with another collaborative partner, and not Netflix.
