Three years ago the control freaks running the Prince estate refused to allow director Kathryn Ferguson to use “Nothing Compares 2 U”, the Prince song owned by the estate, for her Sinead O’Connor doc, Nothing Compares.
A low-budget doc that paid devotional tribute to O’Connor was seriously bruised by the Prince estate by refusing to allow her most famous recording to be heard? This had to be one of the lowest scumbag moves in rock-music history.
And now the Prince estate has struck again.
Variety is reporting that Netflix has canceled the release of a six-part Prince documentary, directed over a period or nearly five years by the greatly respected Ezra Edelman (O.J.: Made in America).
Netflix statement sent to Variety: “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.”
Estate reps are apparently upset that Edelman’s nine-hour doc (which was originally contracted to run six hours) includes “Prince’s ex-girlfriends accusing him of physical and emotional abuse.” The doc also includes accounts of “Prince’s own abusive childhood and the abandonment of his young wife Mayte Garcia after the couple lost their child.”
Variety‘s Thania Garcia and Jem Aswad are reporting that the estate bulldogs are claiming that “a first cut of the film was filled with ‘dramatic’ factual inaccuracies and ‘sensationalized’ renderings of certain events from his life.”
If you’ve experienced the excellence of O.J.: Made in America, you have ample reason to doubt the veracity of the Prince rep claims.
From Sara Weiss‘s “The Prince We Never Knew,” posted on 9.8.24:
“How should we think about artists whose moral failings are exposed? Ezra Edelman manages to present a deeply flawed person while still granting him his greatness — and his dignity.
“Wesley Morris, a critic at The Times and one of a small group of people who have seen the film, told me, ‘It’s one of the only works I have ever seen that approximates the experience of suffering with and suffering through and alongside genius.'”
