Oprah Dropped Millions To Scrap a Documentary on Her Life, Black Twitter Thinks She's Hiding Something
The media icon shocked the entertainment world by dropping a ‘fortune’ to regain the rights to her documentary.
by Stephanie Holland · The RootIn This Story
Oprah Winfrey has been living in the public eye so long, at times it feels like we know everything about her life. However, most of what we actually know comes from an image that’s she’s curated to audiences over the years.
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That veil was set to come off with the 2021 announcement that Apple TV+ was making a documentary about the media mogul’s life. Now, it appears the Oscar-nominated actress executed another one of her surprise deals and shelved the project.
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According to Page Six, Oprah reportedly “paid a fortune” to regain the rights to the doc and is putting the project on pause. The outlet’s sources are blaming a disagreement between Winfrey and the film’s director, Kevin MacDonald (“The Last King of Scotland”), for the friction.
“Kevin made the film, but Oprah didn’t like it and he refused to change it, and Oprah has paid back her fee to Apple,” sources told the outlet.
Naturally, this shocking development led fans on social media to drum up questions and wild guesses about why the former talk show host would drop millions just to keep a documentary from being released.
One person came right out and asked, “What is Oprah hiding?”
Another user wondered if a change in focus led to the media icon’s decision, writing on X, “Was she promised [a] sugary overview but got an actual objective, observatory documentary in which she didn’t like what she saw? I thought every skeleton was out of her closet, so what’s the hide Oprah??”
If creative differences between MacDonald and Oprah really led to this situation, then this isn’t that crazy of a question. It’s possible that “The Color Purple” producer thought she was OK with having her life on full display until she actually watched the finished product.
Despite all the theories about what’s really happening, the billionaire businesswoman’s team has a standard Hollywood reason why the doc has been shelved.
“As the Apple TV+ deal was coming to an end, Ms. Winfrey bought back the rights to her docuseries and has since decided to put the doc on hold,” a spokesperson for Oprah told Page Six.
This is a totally reasonable explanation for the whole situation. In September 2022, Winfrey’s content deal with Apple TV+ was ending, so it’s completely possible that she wanted to retain the rights to any projects she had in development with the streamer. The money involved is certainly more than usual, but these kinds of deals happen regularly.
Frankly, we might never know the real reason the doc went south, but it’s hard to believe that in this day and age, some piece of it won’t leak out somewhere on the internet.