Ezra Edelmen, the Oscar-winning documentarian behind the great 2016 series OJ: Made In America, has made a nine-hour documentary series about Prince for Netflix. We might never get to see it. Yesterday, The New York Times published a lengthy report on the status of the Edelman documentary, which is untitled and unreleased but completed. The series reportedly includes accusations of physical and mental abuse, and those moments might keep the series from ever being released. Now, two companies that handle Prince’s estate have issued a statement on the matter.

In the Times story, writer Sasha Weiss describes some scenes that appear in the Ezra Edelmen documentary, including a moment where onetime Prince girlfriend Jill Jones says that Prince repeatedly punched her in the face after she slapped him during a 1984 argument. The film apparently isn’t a character assassination, though. It also describes Prince’s musical genius and the abusive environment in which he grew up. Weiss writes, “Edelman manages to present a deeply flawed person while still granting him his greatness — and his dignity.”

Executors of the Prince estate reportedly launched into a legal battle with Netflix after seeing an early cut of the film. The Times reports that Prince’s estate is seeking to block the release of the film. Ezra Edelman spent five years working on the documentary, and he was granted access to Prince’s vault and assurance that Prince’s estate, which was then administered by a Minnesota bank, would not have any editorial say in the final product. In 2022, while Edelman’s documentary was in production, Prince’s assets were divided between the companies Primary Wave and Prince Legacy LLC, which revoked Edelman’s access to Prince’s vault. Meanwhile, Netflix laid off Lisa Nishimura, the executive who’d negotiated the documentary in the first place.

According to the Times report, L. Londell McMillan, one of the lawyers now in charge of Prince’s estate, demanded a number of changes to the documentary. Ezra Edelman said that he want along with some of them but that he refused to remove certain moments — Wendy Melvoin saying that Prince told she’d have to renounce her homosexuality for the Revolution to reunite, Prince’s tour manager Alan Leeds talking about antisemitic lyrics — that “felt crucial for the film’s narrative and journalistic cohesion.”

Today, Primary Wave and Prince Legacy have issued a joint statement to The Hollywood Reporter, claiming that they are “working to resolve matters:”

Those with the responsibility of carrying out Prince’s wishes shall honor his creativity and genius. We are working to resolve matters concerning the documentary so that his story may be told in a way that is factually correct and does not mischaracterize or sensationalize his life. We look forward to continuing to share Prince’s gifts and celebrate his profound and lasting impact on the world.

I would dearly love to see this documentary at some point. Here’s hoping they figure it out.