Taking Matters Into Your Own Hands
About that Daily episode...On Ezra, Prince, Netflix, and the NYT
A pretty amazing thing happened on Friday: The country’s newspaper of record dedicated an episode of the most popular daily podcast in America to the discussion of a documentary directed by the most groundbreaking filmmaker of a generation, which was shelved by the world’s largest streaming platform.
Must have been a once-in-a-lifetime event, right? Well, actually, the story itself is not especially remarkable — as anyone who has been in the film or television business long enough knows, projects get made, but never seen, fairly often. May not happen to Academy Awards winners all that much, but anyone that worked on a Warner Bros. blockbuster around 2022 knows it can happen to just about anyone.
Instead, what made this story notable was the players, the context, and what each of their actions tells us about the media system at large. Let’s dive in.
Background: The Friday, March 7 episode of The Daily, titled “The Cinematic Masterpiece You Won’t Get to See”, concerned a documentary series about Prince, directed by Ezra Edelman, called The Book of Prince. According to the podcast, this project was commissioned by Netflix, pursuant to a rights deal between Netflix and the Prince Estate, which had granted access to Prince’s archives of video and music, in exchange for certain factual review rights in the final film (and possibly money, but we’re not sure). Netflix engaged Edelman, who had just won an Oscar for his masterpiece, O.J.: Made in America, and Edelman undertook the task of telling Prince’s story with the same kind of broad personal and cultural context that he gave The Juice.
After years of uncovering a complex, complicated personal history through interviews from Prince’s former friends, lovers, and bandmates, Edelman presented the film to the Prince Estate for review. They were not pleased, so they made a massive stink about the content and length of the piece. Eventually, Netflix acquiesced, and announced that Edelman’s film would be canned, and that “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.”
At some point during this process, Sasha Weiss, a NYT Magazine deputy editor, started reporting on the film. Upon its completion, Weiss saw a cut. In the podcast, Weiss reported on the film, and its demise. Her report was not hearsay or anecdotal — she knew what was in the film, and Edelman chose to speak on the record about the process of his work being locked in a closet.
So what do each of these parties’ actions tell us about film, industry, and media in general right now?
[DISCLAIMER: The following is for commentary and discussion purposes only. It is not legal advice, nor is it based on any first-hand knowledge or representation of any of the parties involved. All of the actions described below are pure conjecture or based on information in The Daily podcast, and are not assertions of fact.]
Prince’s Estate
The role of Prince’s Estate in this ordeal may be the easiest to parse of all. I’ve written before about the thorny issue of paying documentary subjects, which is now a far more common practice than anyone in the industry would care to openly admit, but that discussion mostly focused on the issues facing the filmmaker, studio, and distributor. We also need to consider the interest of the rights holder and their image — they are under no obligation to grant access or cooperate with a documentary team, and have a compelling interest in controlling the representation of their intellectual property.
In this case, the Prince Estate was just doing its job. Like any conglomerate of interested parties seeking to control, protect, and (likely) capitalize on intellectual property rights, the folks that objected to The Book of Prince are acting as rational executors — they don’t want anything bad coming out about the man they loved, and to whom they likely owe duties of care and loyalty. Artists, fans, and the general public may disagree, but it appears they negotiated certain review, consultation and/or control rights with Netflix, and exercised those rights to the fullest. Them’s the breaks. But that brings me to….
Netflix
The preeminent subscription media entity in the world, which made the critical decision that inspired this podcast (and thereby this post). Access, Cooperation and Exclusivity Agreements are very common, and are not, by themselves, problematic in the world of documentary. In this instance, it seems Netflix may have actually held a fairly strong ethical line, at least at the outset, by limiting the Estate’s control to a factual review of the material. This limitation of review is intended to protect the film and filmmaker in much the same way a fair use or defamation review might — to make sure they got their facts straight.
But the Estate pushed hard, and it appears they ultimately drew the line at the agreed-upon length of the film — a six-hour documentary. Edelman’s cut comes in around nine hours, and he refused to cut it by the proposed 33%. This is where Netflix comes in. The podcast’s retelling of the events makes it seem as though Netflix defended the film on factual grounds, but when it came to enforcing a time limit and the creative compromise that would be required to cut it down, sided with the Estate, or found it strategically advantageous to shelve the film entirely, then enter a new deal with the Estate for the rights of the Prince archive. Perhaps that was a legal battle they thought they could not win — or one they did not want to win.
Netflix is in the business of making LOTS of films, and in the documentary space, the strategy is to do so by partnering with valuable IP owners — especially sports leagues, record labels, and celebrities. They are not in the business of going to court against these entities, and, as the podcast frames it, if some individual filmmakers get upset in the process of maintaining these more valuable relationships, that appears to be a price the company may be willing to pay. I just wonder what impact that will have, if any, on the next filmmaker’s decision whether to work on the next celebrity doc.
The New York Times
There is a lot of shit to report on these days! And on a Friday, which likely garners the highest weekday audience because viewers will listen to it over the weekend, the New York Times chose the story of a shelved documentary as its feature on The Daily. This is a fascinating editorial decision!
Yes, people get sick of Trump/DOGE/world burning news, and entertainment features are a nice respite. But they didn’t do an episode on how Sean Baker won all the Oscars on a $6 million budget. They chose to tell the story of a documentary, and frame it as a decision by the leading entertainment platform to silence an artist in favor of its long term commercial interest. The criticism of Netflix was clear in the podcast, as was the Times’ judgment of Netflix’s signal to the rest of the IP-holding universe that “Your next celebrity documentary will be safe here!”
But I think there was something much larger at play here. At a time when Amazon/WaPo, Apple, Facebook, Google, WBD, Paramount/Skydance, and every other major media entity is cowtowing to the White House and DOGE, The New York Times may have taken its first opportunity in Trump 2.0 to send a shot across the media landscape bow: Not only will we be critical of the public institutions that are undermining our democracy, we will also take aim at the private organizations that cower under its weight. Netflix may not have succumbed to any governmental pressure, but they certainly seem to be following the trend of selling out the artist in favor of the shareholder. Maybe I’m overthinking this one, but perhaps this episode was more than just a critique, it was a clarion call for a free press.
Ezra Edelman
Finally, the filmmaker. The maestro behind O.J.: Made in America, which I recently re-watched and is just as much a masterpiece today as when it first came out. From his past work, there should have been no doubt that his approach to Prince would be wide and deep in scope. So the folks at Prince’s Estate, and Netflix for that matter, should have seen The Book of Prince coming from a mile away.
My interest in Edelman is in his decision to take control of his work and its destiny, and go to the New York Times. Edelman has a very good lawyer. I do not know the details of his agreement with Netflix, but I can imagine there is some form of a Confidentiality or No Publicity provision in there (Edelman declines to comment directly on Netflix in the podcast, so likely some obligation was in play there). I do not know when he first started speaking with Sasha Weiss, but it appears it was a while ago — “So I’ve gotten to know Ezra pretty well over the years of reporting this story…”
Perhaps Netflix granted access to Weiss to follow Edelman’s journey, perhaps not. Either way, Edelman’s move to share a cut of the film with Weiss is extraordinary, and completely reshapes the power dynamic of this entire scenario. Edelman’s sole interest here appears to get his film seen — presumably he’s already been paid by the streamer, now he just wants his art out in the world. And his move to share it with a journalist will almost surely be a positive step in that direction.
I understand this anguish on a personal level. I’m in year eight of a doc series I produced that also may never see the light of day. It is currently owned by a big studio, that wasn’t able to sell it to a streamer in 2023, so they’re let it sit on the shelf. But after listening to The Daily on Friday, I called up a friend at a major news outlet — maybe there is a way to build an audience from the news value in the doc story through a podcast, a short form series, or some other version of the project. Then maybe you get a brand on board, and finally bring it back to an SVOD platform that will pay a license fee because the project already has a defined audience.
Who knows, but Ezra Edelman’s willingness to share his creation and frustration with a journalist will likely give him film a chance at exhibition. And in the process, it has exposed a lot more about our media landscape in general.