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Disney+ and Hulu have set a new Bruce Springsteen documentary for an October premiere.

“Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band” will follow the band’s 2023-2024 world tour, featuring footage from band rehearsals and backstage moments, conversations with Springsteen as he develops the setlist and archival clips of the E Street Band. The project is intended to complement Springsteen’s existing body of autobiographical works, which includes the memoir “Born to Run,” the live performance (and documentary) “Springsteen on Broadway,” and the films “Western Stars” and “Letter to You.”

Stream 'Road Diary' On Disney+ $9.99/Month

The documentary is directed by Thom Zimny, the longtime Springsteen collaborator behind “Western Stars” and “Springsteen on Broadway,” as well as music docs “The Gift: The Journey of Johnny Cash” and “Willie Nelson & Family.” Zimny also produces alongside Springsteen, Springsteen’s manager Jon Landau, Adrienne Gerard and Sean Stuart.

Bruce Springsteen...

"Any song that Willie has written, he's lived it." Paramount+ has debuted their new biopic doc series called Willie Nelson & Family, available for streaming this week on their Paramount+ service. This originally premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival earlier in the year, playing in their new Series section. The first authorized work exploring the extraordinary life of Willie Nelson traverses the personal and career ups, downs, and in-betweens of one of the world's most beloved musicians, by turns spiritual, dramatic, and playful. Willie Nelson is now 90 years old and still going! This seems less of a "reality" series and more of a comprehensive look at his life and family, spanning four episodes and over four hours. "Award-winning filmmakers Thom Zimny & Oren Moverman fuse their own unique styles to construct an intimate, cinematic memoir of the Red Headed Stranger, traversing the highs, lows, and in-betweens of Willie’s personal life and professional career.

An upcoming docuseries shares a whole new side to Willie Nelson. After its January 2023 release at “Sundance,” fans will have a chance to get up close and personal with him like never before. “Willie Nelson & Family” explores everything from the artist’s incredible 70-year career to what goes on in his personal life behind the scenes. The fascinating four-part docuseries, “Willie Nelson & Family,” begins streaming on Thursday, Dec. 21 only on Paramount+. You can watch Willie Nelson & Family: Season 1 with a 7-Day Free Trial of Paramount Plus.

How to Watch ‘Willie Nelson & Family’ When: Thursday, December 21, 2023 Stream: Watch with a 7-Day Free Trial of Paramount Plus. Get 30 Days Free$5.99+ / month paramountplus.com

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About ‘Willie Nelson & Family’

As his fans know, Willie Nelson has spent decades in the spotlight and is very well-known as a phenomenal guitarist and singer.

Willie Nelson & Family, a documentary series about the country music icon from filmmakers Thom Zimny and Oren Moverman, is set to bow on Paramount+ on Dec. 21.

The career retrospective is creatively driven by directors Zimny and Moverman, both recent Emmy winners — Zimny for directing the variety special Springsteen on Broadway and Moverman for the TV movie Bad Education, starring Hugh Jackman.

Paramount+ acquired the documentary series, which recalls Nelson’s life and long career as an iconic country music singer-songwriter, after its world premiere at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Nelson participated in the production and allowed Zimny — a frequent Bruce Springsteen collaborator — and Moverman access to his archives.

The four-parter is executive produced by Yellowstone co-creator Taylor Sheridan and is a production of MTV Entertainment Studios, in association with 101 Studios, Blackbird Presents Films and Sight Unseen. “Willie’s music formed the soundtrack of my youth. His songwriting helped shape me as a storyteller…...

Over the past handful of years, Thom Zimny has emerged as one of the most prolific music documentarians around. A former editor on The Wire, Zimny won an Emmy for directing the Netflix film Springsteen on Broadway, reunited with Bruce for Letter to You, chronicled the life of Elvis Presley in Elvis Presley: The Searcher, explored The Man in Black in The Gift: The Journey of Johnny Cash, and helmed the docuseries Willie Nelson and Family, which premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. So, it might seem odd...

“Do I have regrets?” asks Sylvester Stallone at the beginning of “Sly,” the Thom Zimny documentary about him that served as the closing-night film at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday. “Hell yeah, I have regrets.”

Putting that quote up front is a smart way to introduce a film about the man whose career sometimes seems to have resulted in equal parts iconography and mockery. The actor, screenwriter and director created the classic characters Rocky Balboa and John Rambo, but struggled to find respect and made more than his share of terrible films.

Another smart move: New conversations with Stallone run throughout the film, but these are not the usual talking-head interviews in which the subject sits in a chair and runs through his life. Instead, Stallone almost always talks to the camera while standing up and moving around.

Zimny’s camera stays on the go, bobbing and weaving...

“Sly,” director Thom Zimny’s documentary about Sylvester Stallone,” will be the closing-night presentation at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival, TIFF organizers announced on Tuesday.

The film, which will be released by Netflix, will have its world premiere on Saturday, Sept. 16 at Roy Thomson Hall, at the conclusion of the festival that will begin with Hayao Miyazaki’s “The Boy and the Heron.”

Zimny previously came to Cannes with two Bruce Springsteen movies, “The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town” in 2010 and “Western Stars” in 2019. His other films include “Willie Nelson & Family,” “Elvis Presley: The Searcher” and “The Gift: The Journey of Johnny Cash.”

“Sly” covers both Stallone’s career, including the huge hits “Rocky” and “Rambo” and the recent TV series “Tulsa King,” and his personal life from his rough childhood in New York City to now.

“Stallone’s story is one of perseverance,...

Archival and present-day footage are utilized to create a non-linear portrait of a legendary singer-songwriter in Willie Nelson & Family, a seven-part docuseries from directors Thom Zimny and Oren Moverman. Encompassing all seven decades of Nelson’s career, the series also touches upon his “philanthropy, marijuana advocacy, and activism on behalf of the American farmer.” Editors Brett Banks and Chris Iversen discuss their collaborative cut, resulting in a final product that’s an “amalgam” of both of their editing choices and styles. See all responses to our annual Sundance editor interviews here. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the […]

The post “I Couldn’t Even Tell You Who Cut What”: Editors Brett Banks and Chris Iversen on Willie Nelson & Family first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Archival and present-day footage are utilized to create a non-linear portrait of a legendary singer-songwriter in Willie Nelson & Family, a seven-part docuseries from directors Thom Zimny and Oren Moverman. Encompassing all seven decades of Nelson’s career, the series also touches upon his “philanthropy, marijuana advocacy, and activism on behalf of the American farmer.” Editors Brett Banks and Chris Iversen discuss their collaborative cut, resulting in a final product that’s an “amalgam” of both of their editing choices and styles. See all responses to our annual Sundance editor interviews here. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the […]

The post “I Couldn’t Even Tell You Who Cut What”: Editors Brett Banks and Chris Iversen on Willie Nelson & Family first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Caught somewhere between a movie and a series, “Willie Nelson & Family” doubles down on the history and mythology of its namesake to stretch the latter into what would have been better served as the former. Honest, introspective, yet rarely revelatory, the anthology often mistakes the comprehensive for the essential, and while it succeeds in explaining Willie Nelson to its audience, that’s about all it does. For fans of the Red Headed Stranger, that might be enough, but anyone looking to explore Willie’s place in the intersection of country music, pop culture, and the sociopolitical fabric of 20th America might be disappointed.

Continue reading ‘Willie Nelson & Family’ Review: Docuseries Mistakes The Comprehensive For the Essential In Well-Meaning Slog [Sundance] at The Playlist.

Willie Nelson is many things – he’s a country music legend, a Texas icon, an outspoken activist and one of history’s most famous tax evaders. At 89, Nelson’s life so far has been colorful and gloriously overstuffed that it probably wouldn’t fit into a single documentary. That’s why “Willie Nelson & Family,” which just premiered at Sundance, isn’t a movie exactly, but an episodic independent series about his singular life and his music. TheWrap spoke to the series’ directors Tom Zimny and Oren Moverman at Sundance about how the film came together and finding their groove as filmmakers. “It was a great journey,” said Zimny.

Zimny, who has directed a number of Bruce Springsteen films, including 2019’s theatrical release “Western Stars,” and Moverman had never worked together (but Zimny had stuck him in the audience of one of the Springsteen movies) but it is clear from...

Sitting down in The Hollywood Reporter’s Studio at Sundance to promote their new documentary series Willie Nelson and Family, about the life of the legendary musician, filmmakers Thom Zimny and Oren Moverman opened up about the prospect of a narrative feature in the future.

“I never imagined we’d be doing a documentary about him because he never really wanted a documentary made about him,” Moverman explained.

Obviously, Nelson had a change of heart, leading to the premiere of Willie Nelson & Family. So when asked whether a biopic in the vein of modern films like Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocketman, Elvis, or I Wanna Dance With Somebody could ever materialize, Moverman responded encouragingly, saying he thinks Nelson is “interested in that.”

“He’s had time to reflect over the pandemic. He’s been very careful. He’s almost 90 years old. He lost his sister, who was 91, recently. She’s in...