On February 6, 2025, Netflix and the Prince Estate agreed to withhold the release of a nine-hour documentary covering Prince’s life and career after nearly five years of completed work by director Ezra Edelman and a protracted back and forth between Netflix, Edelman, and the estate.
Considering the time spent on the project, Edelman’s pedigree as an Oscar and Emmy-winning documentarian, and the subject’s significance, one has to ask, “How did we get here?” Before we “get here,” it would be instructive to speak to the circumstances of Prince’s death, the extended family battle over the rights to his legacy, and the choices the Prince Estate has made since being legally established.
Prince Rogers Nelson died at his Chanhassen, Minnesota studio, known as Paisley Park, on April 21, 2016, due to an unintentional overdose of Fentanyl. Prince had been taking what he believed to be Vicodin that he was supplied with sans prescription to cope with pain in his hips created by years of ecstatic, but punishing, dance moves. Unfortunately, the black market medication was heavily laced with Fentanyl, leading to his death at age 57. As complicated as Prince’s passing may have been to sort out (Prince’s drug supplier has never been officially named), what followed was an even thornier process to see who would control the fortune he left behind. Prince left no will with which to direct his accumulated wealth (and future royalties) in any direction.
After a nearly six-year battle between Prince’s siblings over the rights to the estate, the Minnesota First Judicial Court split the baby in half, leaving one portion to three half-siblings (Sharon Nelson, John Nelson, and Norrine Nelson), and the other half to Prince Oat Holdings LLC, owned by the music publishing company Primary Wave. From the date of the court decision and moving forward, these two entities have made, and will make, all decisions regarding Prince’s estate, including song rights, royalties, the management of the Paisley Park Museum, new and remastered musical releases, and any future projects that would request the use of Prince’s music.
Having toured the museum, the estate has done an excellent job creating an immersive experience at Paisley Park. The interior of the building is exquisite, the artifacts well displayed, and the guides are incredibly knowledgeable. The three posthumously released albums have weight and significance, and the reissues (particularly the “Sign o’ the Times” box set) have been curated in a remarkably comprehensive fashion. The estate also decided to let YouTube share Prince’s music videos and live performances, something Prince did not allow due to the paltry streaming revenue rate. In doing so, the estate opened up the considerable breadth and width of his music to audiences old and new.
Still, there have been criticisms of the estate regarding the treatment of artists Prince discovered and cultivated over his nearly four-decade career. A galling example is the estate’s treatment of Morris Day–Prince’s childhood friend and Purple Rain co-star. Day had been touring under the moniker “Morris Day and The Time” for years, as his association with the funk band that Prince founded increased the turnout at his live performances. For reasons unstated, the estate made the petty decision to stop Day from using “and The Time” when promoting his shows. The forbidding of the use of the band’s name will take money out of Day’s pockets for as long as the decision stands. Certainly, it is fair for the estate to earn royalties from the music on The Time’s first three albums (most of which Prince wrote and all of which he produced), but to disallow Day the right to use the name of the iconic band he fronted for over forty years goes far beyond the pale.
Prince’s former fiancee and music partner Shelia E. claimed that she was turned away from Paisley Park on the celebration date of what would have been Prince’s 66th birthday last year. The estate rebutted Shelia E.’s claim, but curiously, the gifted drummer had to ask for her drum kit back from the estate, which was on loan to Paisley Park. Jerome Benton, backup singer and “hype man” for The Time (as well as co-starring in both Purple Rain and Under the Cherry Moon with Prince), declined to attend at all due to what he believed was disrespectful treatment of himself and other artists that Prince had major associations with prior to the event. While it’s possible that Shelia E. and Jerome Benton’s recent issues with the estate could be classified as “misunderstandings,” when coupled with the litigation barring Morris Day from using the name he helped make famous; one can see a pattern start to form. Whether it’s simple greed, old grudges, or both, the estate has been far less than benevolent to those who carry on Prince’s legacy through their performances of his songs and the spoken tributes they regularly pay him for making them stars.
Unfortunately, this punishing form of overt protectionism has continued with the dismantling of Edelman’s nine-hour Prince documentary for Netflix. The series was originally intended to begin filming in 2018 with Ava DuVernay (who directed the 2017 Oscar-nominated documentary 13th) at the helm. In August of 2019, DuVernay walked away from the project, stating “It just didn’t work out. There’s a lot of beautiful material there. I wish them well.” DuVernay’s explanation may be short on words, but her sharp brevity is notable, even if the reason for her departure boiled down to the old “creative differences.” Again, a pattern forms here. If I were to attempt to give the pattern a title, it would be, “If no one can get along with you, maybe it’s you.”
Ezra Edelman (who was recruited by Netflix for the project) became attached to the Prince docuseries in early 2019. Edelman has been producing and directing documentaries since 2007. His standing in the industry was bolstered greatly with what many (including myself) consider the definitive take on the OJ Simpson case, O.J.: Made in America, an 8-hour series backed by ESPN that won Edelman his Oscar and his Emmy. Edelman’s take on one of the most infamous trials of the twentieth century went far beyond the courtroom, digging deep into Simpson’s youth, previous history of physical abuse towards women, and most significantly, exploring the cultural and racial divide that was exposed by the jury’s finding of “Not guilty” in the case of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman’s murders, which Simpson had been charged with. Edelman served no sacred cows during the revealing eight-hour film/series, and that was likely where the trouble started, even before Edelman took on the subject of Prince.
The Prince Estate has been notorious in their efforts to shield the image of the mercurial star from even the slightest shreds of negativity. Prince was well known to be incredibly challenging to deal with by the suits in the industry (a fact I always admired) and the artists with whom he worked (a fact I never admired). Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, who played keyboards and bass, respectively, for The Time, were fired in 1983 for supposedly missing a gig. That, however, was not the real reason they were terminated. Unbeknownst to Prince, James and Lewis were producing other artists on the side, and Prince’s obsessive expectations of loyalty (which he often did not return), led to their dismissal upon discovery.
While many of the artists Prince worked with had either made amends with or forgiven him for his controlling and volatile nature before he died, some never did. Another member of The Time, guitarist Jesse Johnson, broke down on stage during the 2019 Prince Celebration at Paisley Park, stating that Prince had underpaid him and never given him the credit he deserved for his musical contributions to the group (which includes the blazing guitar solo on “Jungle Love”).
Ex-girlfriend, Purple Rain co-star, and recording artist Jill Jones claimed that Prince once physically attacked her. His relationship with Vanity, the lead singer of the Prince-produced “girl group” Vanity 6, was known to be stormy. In a fit of pique, Prince replaced Vanity with Apollonia Kotero as the female lead in Purple Rain shortly before filming began. There is also the night in 1991 when a distraught Sinead O’Connor (who had just made Prince’s obscure song “Nothing Compares to You” a massive hit) fled Prince’s home, claiming both verbal and physical abuse. In 2022, the Prince Estate went as far as to deny the producers of the O’Connor documentary Nothing Compares the right to use the song in the film.
Even Quincy Jones held a longstanding grudge against Prince for his refusal to participate in the star-studded recording of USA for Africa’s “We Are the World” (a song created to raise funds for Ethiopian famine relief in 1985) and for allegedly trying to run over Michael Jackson (who Jones produced three albums for) with a limousine.
Regardless of whether or not all of these incidents happened in the manner they’ve been reported, there was no way Edelman was going to glide over the pain Prince caused others or, just as importantly, where that pain stemmed from–a very broken home full of abuse at the hands of both his mother and father. Prince’s home life was so miserable that he was taken in for a time by his friend Andre Cymone (who also went on to record with Prince) and his family while barely in his teens. On other occasions he hopped from home to home of other friends. He effectively ran away and neither of his parents behaved as if they wanted him back.
The very idea that the director who exposed O.J. Simpson and the ugly social undercurrents that surrounded his life and trial would not be a seeker of truth on any subject given to him all but bends the mind. Did the estate not see the Simpson film/series? Did Netflix not communicate to the estate that Edelman is not a man interested in a tribute-only documentary? Those questions remain unanswered.
While few people have seen the full nine-hour series or spoken out about their impressions, a small handful have. They include New York Times film critic Wesley Morris, who said of the series, “It’s one of the only works I have ever seen that approximates the experience of suffering with and suffering through and alongside genius.” Questlove (drummer of The Roots, and the Oscar-winning documentarian of Summer of Soul) spoke of his viewing experience in an almost grief-stricken manner: “It was a heavy pill to swallow when someone you put on a pedestal is normal. Everything’s here: He’s a genius, he’s majestical, he’s sexual, he’s flawed, he’s trash, he’s divine, he’s all those things.” Hoop Dreams director Steve James also praised the series, saying, “As a viewer, you are asked to grapple in the same way the filmmaker does — with all the complexity of who this guy was. The good, the bad and the ugly. That’s the integrity of the filmmaker and the completeness of it. You know that what you’re watching is indisputable.” James also found the extended length of the series well-executed. Ah, but “therein lies the rub”–the length.
Edelman turned in a nine-hour cut to Netflix, but the original contract for the series listed the project as six hours long. Six is not nine, and that three-hour difference put the Prince Estate in the driver’s seat: They could withhold the use of Prince’s music due to breach of contract, and without the music, you have no series.
Edelman may have thought he was giving Netflix a bonus with the additional three hours, but when the estate viewed the series, they were taken aback and then some. Lawyer L. Londell McMillan spoke for the estate, declaring the project full of “False and unsubstantiated rumors, hate and vengeance more than showing the brilliance & MUSIC will NOT be the focus of a ‘definitive’ doc on Prince!” (and yes, the CAPS LOCK type and poor sentence structure belongs to McMillan). Clearly, over time, the divisions between the filmmaker and the estate must have deepened, leaving Netflix in the position of having to choose a side. They chose the estate, shelving the project and essentially negating the original contract entirely.
I can’t imagine how Edelman, whose reputation as a filmmaker is not in question, took McMillan’s statement or Netflix’s co-decision with the Prince Estate to bury the series. It couldn’t have been well. Nearly half a decade of Edelman’s life, under bus thrown.
Those of us who are devotees of Prince’s artistry will likely never see Edelman’s series, and will probably fall into two camps: Those who do not want our image of him tarnished, and those of us who want entertainment and the truth. You can park me firmly in the second camp. Prince was the soundtrack of my miserable high school years, living in a small conservative town in Michigan. When I saw Purple Rain in the theater (I was underage, but a small lie to the ticket-taker about having my parents’ permission to see the film sufficed), I was completely transfixed. Hell, I was transformed. Over the course of the film’s one hour and fifty-one minute run time, my entire view of art, and hence, life, changed.
Forever.
Growing up in a town of 11,000 people, Prince seemed more like an alien to me than a human being. But he was human. And everyone who loved his music and idolized his bold, artistic development deserves the whole of the man on film. The Prince Estate is intending to move forward with a new documentary series, starting from scratch. I’m sure it will be entertaining. How could it not be? Prince may well be the most talented pop musician ever to walk the earth. If you just played six hours of him performing live from various venues he’s rocked over his lifetime (and having seen him live, I can say there’s really nothing like him), it would be entertaining.
I’m sure a strictly uplifting docuseries about Prince and his towering musical achievements would be enjoyable in a limited way, but it would not be complete. It would not tell you who this unusual, physically diminutive (he barely cleared five feet tall), one-of-a-kind genius was and how he came to be. It would be hagiography. That’s what the Prince Estate wanted, and Ezra Edelman doesn’t do hagiography. Edelman is being punished for his integrity, and because of the estate’s lack thereof, he and people like me who want more than just the shiny parts of this legendary artist displayed have suffered a great loss.
The loss of the truth.
