EXCLUSIVE: Diana Unheard is the explosive three-part documentary that features the Princess in her own words. With never-before-heard audio, the tapes cover some of the ground explored by her brother, Earl Spencer, in his recent book, ‘Swan Song’, which sparked a war of words between him and the Palace.

The producers of the three-part doc, however, told Deadline their aim was to reframe the narrative around the Princess and give her a voice, almost three decades after her tragic death.

“The media always gave us this tragedy that Diana was sad and lonely and she was manipulated,” said Kerene Barefield, Creative Director, Love Monday TV, which produces Diana Unheard. In her first interview about the doc, she added: “These tapes don’t tell that story at all. They tell a story of an incredibly brave woman who had agency and knew what she wanted and how she was going to get to it.”

Years later, the tapes speak to modern-day royal matters. There is Diana speaking about Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, formerly Prince Andrew, who was stripped of his titles last year because of his association with Jeffrey Epstein. She talks about her sons and the line of succession. There is also Diana talking about her relationship with now Queen Camilla.

Recalling one excerpt, Barefield said: “There’s a story that they’re at an event, and she confronts Camilla because she’s been downstairs with Charles for a long period of time.”

In the tapes, Diana recounts her recollection of that meeting. “She (Camilla) said, ‘You’ve got everything that you’ve ever wanted, you’ve got all the men in the world fall in love with you, and you’ve got two beautiful children. What more do you want?’ So I said, ‘I want my husband.’”

Behind The Royal Scenes

Love Monday makes shows about the British royals including Her Majesty The Queen: Behind Closed Doors for ITV, William and Harry: Love and Betrayal for Channel 5 and talk show The Royal Beat for Prime Video in the U.S. It was when author Andrew Morton appeared on the latter that the prospect of accessing the Diana tapes became a possibility.

Morton’s ‘Diana: Her True Story’ used the recordings in the headline-making book, which rocked the British establishment. The interviews were actually between Diana and her friend James Colthurst and recorded in 1991.

The book was published in 1992, but Diana’s involvement was not revealed until after her death in 1997.

“We were talking about the tapes and I asked, where are they?,” Barefield recalled asking Morton when he was on The Royal Beat. “It changed his life doing that book with Diana … I think for a long period of time, he just wanted to close them away.”

Decades later, however, the guardians of the audio tapes were willing to work with Love Monday. Morton, ‘Diana: Her True Story’ publisher Michael O’Mara, and Colthurst gave the green light to use the audio and the trio all appear in Diana Unheard.

Segments of the tapes have been aired before, notably in Nat Geo’s 2017 doc Diana: In Her Own Words, but the producers of Diana Unheard had access to all of the tapes, about five hours in all, meaning the new series has never-before-heard audio of the Princess.

The documentary’s three parts are entitled: Got To Get Out; You’re On Your Own; and Time Is Precious.

The series unpacks the subterfuge and secrecy required to record the interviews and how Diana and Colthurst were on high alert while making the recordings, Barefield explained.

“They’re talking, and then they think someone’s outside the door, listening … another time they play classical music loudly, so that people can’t hear them.

“Something I don’t think people understand at all, is that how she took agency to get this book out, and her reasons for wanting it out. But also how, when it came out, no-one could know that she had anything to do with it.”

Diana’s Voice

In a world where the narrative around Diana’s story is often argued about and decided upon by men, the producers hope having a doc series from a female-led production company shows Diana in a different light.

“One of the things I loved when I first heard the tapes was just hearing her laughter,” Barefield said. “In the middle episode, we go back to her childhood. There’s all this stuff that you wouldn’t expect and I think it shows that she had that agency and that kind of drive from a very young age.

“And then the final episode brings it all back to the book again, and you start getting this countdown to when it is going to come out, and there is this time bomb that’s ready to explode.”

As well as Morton, Colthurst and O’Mara, Diana Unheard features her lover, Major James Hewitt. “His interview is incredibly moving, because you can see how he had this division of loyalty to the Sovereign – he was a military man, and he had pledged allegiance to his country – and yet he fell in love with Diana, and for five years had a relationship with her.”

There will be strong interest from international buyers for the series with news on where it will play around the world expected soon. Cineflix Rights is distributing the doc and it is a big launch at MIPCOM next week.

Barefield said: “This is what Diana would have done if she was still alive today. That’s how we framed it. It’s her documentary.”

Prince is used to getting the royal treatment. But the award-winning show dog, an Afghan hound, becomes a driver for all sorts of crazy machinations in a cinematic and absurdist battle royal full of black humor that ensues in Uruguayan director and screenwriter Federico Borgia’s solo feature debut, which is simply entitled Prince.

Beyond the best-in-show dog, the movie stars his owner, her butler and their extended family. The setting: the fading seaside luxury of Punta del Este.

Prince, starring Roberto Suárez (The Saint), Maitina De Marco (27 Nights), Esteban Bigliardi (27 Nights) and more, gets its world premiere at the 70th edition of the BFI London Film Festival (LFF) on Thursday, Oct. 8. Alpha Violet is handling sales for the highly stylized film.

Since Prince becomes the main prize in a ruthless custody battle, the festival website describes the Uruguayan-Argentine co-production as a “kitsch comedy about avarice and love.” And class divides also play a key role.

“At the heart of the film is Jaime (Suárez), a former lover turned live-in butler to Isabel (De Marco), an affluent Argentine woman with whom he has shared two decades in an expansive coastal villa,” reads a synopsis. “Their peculiar domestic routine revolves around Isabel’s prize-winning Afghan Hound, Prince. When Isabel dies unexpectedly in her swimming pool, her will reveals an absurd condition: her entire luxury estate has been left to Prince, with Jaime appointed as his guardian. Isabel’s human relatives can only claim the property once the dog dies.”

So when Isabel’s estranged son and granddaughter move in, intent on finding a way to oust the dog, Jaime tries to protect Prince while being forced to confront Diego, his own estranged son, and a past he has long avoided. The resulting tension turns the villa into a claustrophobic pressure cooker.

Borgia, who previously co-directed Clever (2015) and The Champion of the World (2019) with Guillermo Madeiro, talked to THR about how Prince draws on his own experience living in Punta del Este and a childhood fascination with show dogs, as well as the cinematic atmosphere he crafted.

Watch a trailer for Prince right here.

The inspiration for Prince came from the filmmaker’s life. “It was very much influenced because I moved from Montevideo to Punta del Este. It’s a touristic coast town where social classes mix up – there’s this working class and this class that pays for services,” Borgia tells THR. “There is this mix of glamor and decadence that started surrounding me, and I started a game of observation. I started looking at people in different places and writing down things I saw and then started an imaginative game of questions about what was behind what I was seeing.”

The show dog seed was planted at an earlier age, though, he recalls. “When I was a kid, I had this nice dog that was given to me when I was 10,” Borgia explains. “And I remember going, with my mother, to this dog groomer [to trim the dog’s hair]. He didn’t participate in dog shows, but at this grooming place, I saw these pictures of contests with these guys in suits posing. They looked like lawyers, but with a dog.”

The creative started to mesh up these real-life elements with “this story of this inheritance thing,” Borgia recalls.

The character he conceived as a protagonist is in an unusual, some may even say uncomfortable, position. “He’s a worker who met this lady in some kind of service relationship, and then he became her lover, and that started this undefined point between being a lover, partner, butler. It’s really undefined as you start discovering, and then all the other relationships and bonds and all the problems that come with them and family come into the film.”

Finding the cast was a mix of asking people he had long admired and finding faces he wasn’t as familiar with, Borgia tells THR.

“Roberto Suárez, who plays Jaime, is someone I have wanted to work with for a long time, and he accepted really fast,” the filmmaker shares. “I really admire him, not only as an actor, but also as a great theater creator. So I really wanted to work with him throughout the [creative] process. He was reading different versions of the script and throwing out ideas, and they were always brilliant ideas. He’s also a great person.”

To find cast in Argentina, Borgia started exploring opportunities through castings, asking people and watching movies. “So, there were different parts and approaches to the casting process, and I am very happy with the cast I found,” he concludes.

Did the dog actor ever cause any challenges on set? “The dog was always perfect,” shares Borgia. “We never had a problem with the dog.” Except for that one time when things got hairy. “Just one time, he fell into the pool, and we had to dry his hair for two or three hours,” he says.

And no, the director didn’t choose an Afghan hound for its reputation for trainability but its aesthetics, its look. “I actually started investigating on the internet how to train a dog,” Borgia says. “And the Afghan hound was really low on the list of trainable dogs, well below the Border Collie, the German Shepherd and others.”

But the creative team met a man who lives with eight Afghan hounds. “There’s another film in that,” Borgia tells THR with a smile. “But he told us that Afghans are difficult, but he has one dog who is really young and different. He said he is like a Labrador in the body of an Afghan. He was really social and really calm.”

For Borgia, the story of Prince may unfold in a specific setting, but he expects audiences in various parts of the world will recognize key themes and issues that the movie explores. “The story itself is universal, but the most important thing for me was the characters and their relationship, and the tone of the film. I felt I could make it different. The original thing is how an author can make the premise of a film different.”

What’s next for Borgia? “I want to talk about it, but I have no clue,” he tells THR. “Every time I finish a film, I really don’t know if I’m going to make another one. Or at least that’s how I feel. But I know I will because it’s like an addiction. You know you’re going to fall into it again.”

David Ellison and Ynon Kreiz spent a big chunk of their first day as CEO and co-CEO of Skydance, respectively, being interviewed.

First by CNN’s Anderson Cooper at the company town hall on the Warner Bros. lot in the morning and then by reporters in the afternoon at a press conference held on the other studio lot owned by the new Skydance, Paramount.

Ellison and Kreiz, following the trend of co-CEOs dressing alike, met with press on Stage 3, a fitting setting for a company driven by technology, as Ellison always stresses. Its manager Craig Weiss described it as “the first of its kind virtual production stage, utilizing laser projection.”

That was a major upgrade from the August 2025 post-merger Paramount press conference on the lot, which took place in an empty room nearby. (In another change, two of the senior Paramount executives who took questions alongside Ellison back then, Jeff Shell and Cindy Holland, are no longer there.)

The Skydance team utilized the immersive projection equipment for a Day One sizzle reel promoting the Paramount and Warner Bros. titles that are coming together. Despite the event taking place on a TV stage, the video was very film-focused, largely ignoring television for the majority of it until a sequence of series highlights in the final seconds.

Ellison and Kreiz were asked to elaborate on the language from the press release announcing Kreiz’s appointment as co-CEO, which stipulated that all business units report to both of them, and explain how they divvy up CEO duties.

“There will be natural delineation between us in terms of our respective experience and concentration, which we believe are highly complementary,” Kreiz said. “Where David will focus on creative, technology, long-term strategy, including especially as it relates to the creative part of the business, I will focus more on the operations and the day-to-day management of the business, including integration, particularly the first phase.”

The duo, who will take their message to investors next, were asked to explain how Skydance, which has $79B in debt, can commit to $30B – $40B on producing new content.

“We have a business plan,” Kreiz said. “There’s a complete financial envelope to how we’re going to run the business, and content is is a spend, but you can also see it as an investment because it’s also going to drive growth. And as a whole, yes, we have debt, but we expect to reduce the leverage.”

Ellison pointed to Paramount’s balance sheet for the last year.

“We’ve over delivered on synergies, $2.7 billion basically by the end of this year, from an initial announcement of $2 billion, we did that while doubling the film slate at Paramount, from eight films to 15, greenlighting four new and returning series, and growing even significantly year over year. So you actually can do both things simultaneously.”

Other tough questions Ellison faced included his family’s cozy relationship with President Donald Trump (“I think it’s important to talk to everybody on on both sides of the aisle” & “We believe in complete editorial independence”) and how he plans to rehabilitate his image and regain the trust of those in Hollywood who opposed the merger (“I do genuinely believe this is the the best outcome for the industry. I think we will deliver for the creative community. We will deliver for our shareholders. And the best I can say to our detractors is, give us time, and we’ll prove it.”).

There weren’t specifics on a number of topics — from the timeframe to merge the company’s streaming platforms HBO Max and Paramount+, to a possible consolidation of the three TV studios down the road, to the plan for Skydance’s 30+ cable networks as well as how film and TV operations will be split between the Warner Bros. and Paramount lots, how the Paramount and Warner Bros. studios will get to the 30 movies a year goal and the status of Barbie 2.

As Ellison and Kreiz noted repeatedly, it was Day One after all.