Ezra Edelman is standing by his work. After news broke that Netflix decided to shelve the Prince documentary he spent six years working on, Edelman bashed the streamer and the late singer’s estate for making that call.
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In a 2024 interview with The New York Times, Edelman claimed he was told that Prince’s estate would have no editorial control over the project. However, they would be allowed to review it for factual accuracy. However, when they saw a cut, they claimed “it misrepresented Prince” and sought to block its release. Eventually, they were successful.
In a February statement, Netflix said, “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.”
“It’s a joke,” Edelman said on the Pablo Torre Finds Out podcast. “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. You think I have any interest in putting out a film that is factually inaccurate?”
“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… I’m not Prince, but I worked really hard making something, and now my art’s being stifled and thrown away.”
Why the Prince Documentary Was Blocked
Edelman called the decision to shelve the project “galling.” He further bashed “the short-sightedness of a group of people whose interest is their own bottom line.” As for why Prince’s estate was so opposed to the project, Edelman speculated that they were “afraid” to show the singer’s “humanity.”
“The lawyer who runs the estate essentially said he believed that this would do generational harm to Prince,” Edelman said. “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.”
Sasha Weiss, a New York Times reporter who screened Edelman’s documentary in 2023, called the project “a cursed masterpiece.” She noted that it showed “a deeply flawed person while still granting him his greatness—and his dignity.”
Weiss reported that the documentary included an interview with Prince’s ex, Jill Jones. She claimed the singer once punched her repeatedly. She also noted that it touched on Prince’s abusive childhood and his estrangement from his family. Prince’s newborn baby’s death and his death at age 57 after a fentanyl overdose were also covered.
“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**king brilliant.’ Everything about who you believe he is is in this movie. You get to bathe in his genius,” Edelman said. “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.”
Photo by BERTRAND GUAY/AFP via Getty Images
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