Prince is one of the most fascinating and talented musicians of the last half-century. The late pop, funk, and rock artist has a huge following for that reason, but his fans won’t be thrilled at the news that a new documentary focused on Prince on the way from Netflix will now never see the light of day. The streamer has made a deal with Prince’s estate not to release the movie, effectively burying it forever.

Key Details:

• The untitled movie was reportedly nine hours in length.
• Oscar-winning director Ezra Edelman was the driving force behind the film.
• A 2022 change in the administration of the Prince estate led to the documentary’s ultimate demise.

Netflix’s Prince documentary was to be nine hours long and has actually been completed. Nevertheless, after a deal struck between the artist’s estate and the streaming service, it will not be released.

“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,” Netflix said in a statement to the Minnesota Star Tribune. “As a result, the Netflix documentary will not be released.”

The documentary was directed by Ezra Edelman, who won an Oscar and an Emmy for the 2016 film “OJ: Made in America.” Edelman was granted unprecedented access to the Prince archives—also known as The Vault—and was told the estate would not try to exert editorial control over the project. He spent five years working on the documentary.

In 2022, however, administrative changes left new people in charge of the estate. They blocked Edelman’s access to The Vault and began demanding cuts and reshoots. Around the same time, the Netflix executive who had the film commissioned in the first place left the company. Soon, estate members were taking to social media to allude to the film as a hit job, and the writing was on the wall.

Now, the documentary is buried for good. Prince fans will have to continue to wait to see a film produced about the global superstar if the estate decides to allow another such project to go forward in the future.

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