How do you alter “music’s biggest night” after the death of one of music’s biggest icons? And how do you do it in less than 24 hours?
A Death in the Family: The Show Must Go On takes viewers behind the scenes of the 54th annual GRAMMY Awards after the news of Whitney Houston‘s death, a day prior to the event (Feb. 11). The film includes late Friday afternoon when Paul McCartney‘s performances were being rearranged and rehearsals and re-write sessions on Sunday.
Related: Jennifer Hudson Honors Whitney: ‘I Will Always Love You’ [VIDEO]
The 26-minute documentary features host LL Cool J, Jennifer Hudson, Bruce Springsteen, Joe Walsh, Foo Fighters’ Grohl, executive producer Ken Ehrlich and more.
“There was greater interest than normal because of the circumstances, but an awful lot of people want to know about the process,” Ehrlich told Billboard. “We never said, ‘let’s look back.’ It was incredible how much stuff we didn’t have because there was little footage other than rehearsals. But we had some B-roll and we lucked out that film crew was following Paul McCartney.”
The 2012 show brought in 39.9 million viewers making it the second largest audience to watch a GRAMMY Awards show.
“Maybe we’ve learned something in this process,” Ehrlich said. “Maybe we ought to think about doing this every year. We didn’t even think about this one until the middle of March.”
A Death in the Family will premiere June 11 at the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in North Hollywood, Calif. and can also be seen on Grammy.com.