Yes, Netflix Is Making Its Own Britney Spears Documentary

The #FreeBritney movement has been at the forefront of public discourse since the release of The New York Times and Hulu documentary, Framing Britney Spears. The documentary focuses on Spears' rise to fame and the subsequent journey with her "temporary" conservatorship at the hand of her father, Jaime Spears. Not to be outdone, Netflix now also has a Spears-centered documentary in the works.

The forthcoming documentary (which Netflix alleges to have begun prior to the release of Framing Britney Spears) has filmmaker Erin Lee Carr at its helm. Carr has made a name for herself within the narrative documentary world with works focusing on women, true crime, and virality; she's previous directed the Netflix miniseries How to Fix a Drug Scandal, the HBO documentary At the Heart of Gold about the scandal surrounding physician Larry Nassar and the U.S. Olympic gymnast team, and Mommy Dead and Dearest, which chronicles the story of Gypsy Rose Blanchard, a victim of Munchausen syndrome by proxy.

Details on Netflix and Carr's Spears documentary are still sparse, with reports noting that the film is not yet finished and without an air date. Documentaries about the beloved pop star are not the first time that Hulu and Netflix have gone head to head with competing documentaries. Both streaming giants dropped documentaries about the disastrous 2017 music festival gone to hell, Frye Festival, within days of each other in 2019.

Their rival documentaries about Spears' life and conservatorship will hopefully have a net positive effect on Spears' case against her father in court, and not open a path toward a much darker reality: a new cycle in the exploitation of the pop star's life.