From Prince to Michael Jackson: Why Are the Most Controversial Documentaries Getting Canned?

Freelance journalist/critic Zach Schonfeld details the shifting landscape of celebrity documentary, with more and more projects leaning toward risk aversion and/or incorporating subject participation at varying levels of the filmmaking process. Schonfeld includes accounts of recent documentaries, such as OJ: Made in America filmmaker Ezra Edelman’s nine-hour Prince documentary (The Book of Prince), which reportedly conveyed a multilayered, complex, and, at times, dark view of the musician’s life and personality and which Netflix shelved due to push back from the artist’s estate; the streaming disappearance of the Michael Jackson documentary Leaving Neverland following a lawsuit from Jackson’s estate; first lady Melania Trump reportedly set to profit from an upcoming Amazon Prime documentary focused on her; and more.