A highly anticipated documentary about Prince will not be moving forward, Netflix announced Thursday.
In a statement on Instagram, the streaming platform, along with the late singer's estate, revealed they had struck a deal that resulted in the cancellation of the nine-hour-long film.
“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,” the statement read.. “As a result, the Netflix documentary will not be released.”
Around the same time, Prince's estate posted a video captioned, "The Vault Has Been Freed. #FREE"
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Directed by Ezra Edelman, the Academy Award-winning filmmaker behind "OJ: Made in America," the project was expected to expose the pattern of abuse in Prince's life — both the violence he allegedly experienced at the hands of his father, and the violence he allegedly inflicted upon other people.
According to a September report from the New York Times Magazine, the documentary includes interviews with several ex-girlfriend-muses who allege the pop star was physically and emotionally abusive.
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The scenes of abuse were carefully woven between ones exploring Prince's artistic prowess and revisiting Prince's legendary presence on stage, the report said.
Edelman told the Times the project took him almost five years to perfect.
Shortly after his fatal accidental overdose in 2016, the "Purple Rain" singer's estate was temporarily left in the hands of a bank in Minnesota due to his failure to leave a will, the Times report said. At that point, the estate had no objection to the project and agreed to relinquish all editorial influence, though it was permitted to review the film for factual accuracy.
As a part of the deal, Netflix was granted full access to Prince's "vault," the characteristically-private icon's personal archive of unreleased songs, concert recordings, photographs and more located in the basement of his former home in Chanhassen, Minnesota.
Several years later the estate changed hands, and upon reviewing a cut of the film, the new executors entered a contentious legal battle with Netflix to cut the project, expressing their displeasure with the film's content and belief that it inaccurately represented the singer's personality.
