2012’s Searching for Sugar Man, which won that year’s Best Documentary award at the Oscars, was one of the most moving documentaries to come out in years, a feat helped along by the real-life resurfacing of the film’s subject, Sixto Rodriguez. That film’s producer, Simon Chinn, has brought on director Kevin Macdonald to create a new musician-focused documentary, this time about the legendary Whitney Houston.
Macdonald is perhaps best known for his 2006 film The Last King of Scotland, but he’s made several documentaries over the years, including an Oscar-winner with 1999’s Storyville. Since then, though, none of them have approached the level that the Whitney Houston doc will surely reach. Whitney’s life has been unofficially cataloged before, most notably in Lifetime’s Angela Bassett-directed Whitney, which in no way cooperated with the singer’s estate during its production, and was, as is to be expected of these Lifetime biopics, pretty bad.
As Deadline points out, Showtime has also started production on a documentary about Whitney, directed by the guy behind Kurt & Courtney, Nick Broomfield, though the two works aren’t related. And, seeing as this new Macdonald-helmed project has been endorsed by Whitney’s estate, it’s a better bet that this new film will be given fuller access to the works of the singer.
The projected release date for the film, at least in the UK, is 2017, and can probably be expected in the U.S. around the same time.