Additionally, expect the "making of" documentary to fully merge with the exposé. The upcoming documentary about the making of The Wizard of Oz will reportedly focus less on the flying monkeys and more on the toxic working conditions for Judy Garland.
Finally, interactive entertainment industry documentaries are on the horizon. Netflix experimented with this in Bear Grylls: You vs. Wild . Imagine a choose-your-own-adventure doc where you decide whether a failing movie studio should fire its CEO or double down on a bad script. The entertainment industry documentary has become essential because it performs a necessary function: it holds a mirror up to the dream factory. We love movies, music, and TV because they offer escape. But we watch these documentaries because we need perspective.
The catalyst for this shift was arguably Overnight (2003), a brutal chronicle of The Boondock Saints director Troy Duffy. It exposed arrogance and self-destruction without a safety net. But the genre hit its mainstream stride with two major milestones in the late 2010s.
Streamers have capitalized on this with "eventized" releases. Spring Awakening: Those You’ve Known (HBO) turned a one-night reunion concert into a must-watch document of millennial nostalgia. The Veldt (Amazon) took a Ray Bradbury story and used a documentary style to discuss AI in animation.
The recent controversy surrounding Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV highlighted this dilemma. The doc exposed horrific abuse at Nickelodeon, but it also re-traumatized survivors while garnering millions of views for Discovery+. There is a fine line between shining a light and selling tickets to a fire.
