Ava DuVernay is making it rain purple at Netflix. The “Wrinkle in Time” helmer is working with the streamer on a Prince documentary, Deadline confirms. Set to cover the iconic musician’s entire life, the multiple-part doc has the full cooperation of Prince’s estate, “which is providing interviews, archival footage, photos, and archive access.” Prince died in 2016.
The last doc DuVernay directed, 2016’s “13th,” received an Oscar nomination. The Netflix film explores the connection between mass-incarceration and slavery.
“Prince was a genius and a joy and a jolt to the senses,” DuVernay told Deadline. “The only way I know how to make this film is with love. And with great care. I’m honored to do so and grateful for the opportunity entrusted to me by the estate.”
“Purple Rain,” “Sign O’ the Times,” and “Parade” are among Prince’s best known albums.
DuVernay’s first feature was a doc, 2008’s “This Is the Life,” a look inside the alternative hip-hop movement in ’90s LA. Since then, her credits include creating OWN family drama “Queen Sugar” and directing Martin Luther King, Jr. biopic “Selma.” Her latest pic, sci-fi adventure story “A Wrinkle in Time,” hit theaters in March.
The Time’s Up advocate, who has been honored by GLAAD, the NAACP, and the PGA this year, recently signed an open letter about Hollywood’s pay gap. “Activism is inherently a creative endeavor,” she has said. “It takes a radical imagination to be an activist, to envision a world that is not there. It takes imagination and that’s not far from art.”
DuVernay has many projects in the pipeline, including “The New Gods,” a DC Comics adaptation about a group of deities who come into existence after the gods of classic mythology are killed, a Netflix miniseries about the Central Park Five, and a TV adaptation of Octavia Butler’s “Dawn.”
