Kevin Smith’s unreleased Prince documentary is to “finally see the light”.
The 52-year-old director has revealed the access-all-areas film he made before the late music icon’s death in April 2016, at the age of 57, from an accidental fentanyl overdose, is going to be released eventually.
The ‘Jay and Silent Bob’ helmer spent hours chatting to the ‘Raspberry Beret’ hitmaker at his Paisley Park Estate for the project.
The collaboration came about after Prince had rejected the movie maker’s request to use his hit ‘The Most Beautiful Girl in the World’ in Kevin’s 2001 buddy comedy ‘Jay and the Silent Bob Strike Back’.
During ‘An Evening with Kevin Smith’, Kevin recalled: “We were trying to get a Prince song for ‘Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back’ … we were trying to get Prince’s ‘The Most Beautiful Girl in the World’ but we couldn’t get any response back from him.”
However, Kevin would later get a call from Prince, who said he was a huge fan of his 1999 flick ‘Dogma’, and asked if he would work with him on a concert film.
Prince told him: “I have this thing where I’m gonna debut my new album for a bunch of fans … I want to make a movie that we can bring to the Cannes Film Festival.”
In a new interview, the comedian has given an update on the film and revealed it’s looking likely it will get a release date.
He told The Guardian when asked what the chances are of the doc coming to screens: “Very high. The director of ‘OJ: Made in America’ is making a documentary for Netflix, and came to the house to interview me. When they went to the vaults after Prince died, they found so much unreleased music and so many music videos, but the only footage of him talking was what I shot. It’s extraordinary: he acts differently to how he ever acted in his entire life, and he talks for hours and hours. It looks like it’s finally going to see the light.”