Yahoo Finance Hulu and Netflix again have dueling documentaries — this time about Britney Spears
Surprise! FX on Hulu is dropping a new Britney Spears documentary Friday that's also a follow-up to their well-known Framing Britney Spears doc. That means that, once again, Hulu and Netflix are doing the dance of the dueling docs.
FX on Hulu announced Friday morning that Controlling Britney Spears, made by the same team that did Framing Britney Spears, will premiere Friday at 10 p.m. ET with "new allegations from insiders with intimate knowledge of Britney's daily life inside the conservatorship."
The surprise drop comes shortly after Netflix revealed its plans to release a Britney vs. Spears documentary on Tuesday, the day before the next court hearing in Spears' conservatorship case. It's a situation that sounds similar to Hulu and Netflix's competing Fyre Festival documentaries.
AFP via Getty Images Britney Spears
Netflix released its trailer for Fyre in January 2019 ahead of a Jan. 18 premiere, and then shortly after, Hulu moved to drop its own documentary on the doomed music festival four days sooner. There was some added drama in that specific case, being that the producers of both documentaries had respective conflicts of interest in covering Fyre Fest, but the streamers find themselves in the same release position with their Spears docs.
Now, how would Spears feel about all of this? The 39-year-old pop star released a statement on her Instagram page in May after the newfound attention she received from documentaries like Framing Britney Spears. She said she was "deeply flattered" but felt the wave of docs were also "hypocritical."
She wrote at the time, "they criticize the media and then do the same thing 🤔🤔🤔????? Damn … I don't know y'all but I'm thrilled to remind you all that although I've had some pretty tough times in my life … I've had waaaayyyy more amazing times in my life and unfortunately my friends … I think the world is more interested in the negative 🤷🏼♀️🤷🏼♀️🤷🏼♀️ !!!!"
More recently, Spears' fiancé Sam Asghari responded on Instagram to Netflix's trailer for Britney vs. Spears. "I hope the profit from these docs go towards fighting agains [sic] injustice #freebritney," he wrote in the comments.
Spears spoke for the first time on her conservatorship in court in June during which time she emphatically argued to end it. "I just want my life back. It's been 13 years and it's been enough," she said.
"When Britney spoke publicly about her conservatorship in detail for the first time during a court hearing in June, she said a reason she hadn't spoken up earlier is she didn't think people would believe her," Framing Britney Spears and Controlling Britney Spears director Samantha Stark said in a statement accompanying the news of the latest documentary. "She said she felt abused under the conservatorship and questioned whether the judge thought she was lying. Britney's speech motivated the people in this film to seek us out to share their stories — at great risk to themselves — because they felt compelled to back up what Britney was saying with evidence they had or moments they witnessed."
"Britney's situation raises a lot of important questions about the conservatorship system at large and whether it is working properly," producer Liz Day added. "We felt that it was in the public interest to examine that."
Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.
Related content:
