Are Music and Other Celebrity Films Killing the Documentary?

The Hollywood Reporter writers Steven Zeitchik and Ethan Millman report on shifts in the documentary field, inspired by an evaluation of the Emmys documentary special category. Featuring accounts from veteran documentary programmer Thom Powers, documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney, Sony Music Entertainment’s Tom Mackay, and former HBO executive Sheila Nevins, the writers discuss a move in the industry toward authorized celebrity music biographies, catering to a large built-in audience, and generally, toward a marketing mindset rather than more serious, rigorous, artistic exploration into a figure or issue.