Netflix Announces Release Date for 3D Printing Documentary ‘Print The Legend’

If you are at all like me, then you pretty much gobble up any media related to 3D printing. For the most part, this means mainly articles, and a few good books, in addition to the seldom appearances of the technology on morning news shows, as well as local news broadcasts. As for an easily accessible mainstream documentary, or movie about 3D printing, such content does not yet exist. This all is about to change however.

Back in March, a documentary called ‘Print The Legend‘ debuted at the 2014 SXSW Film Festival, where it was the recipient of the special jury recognition award for editing and storytelling. Just a few weeks after that, Netflix announced that they had acquired the rights to the documentary for an undisclosed sum, which would eventually bring the film to tens of millions of households worldwide.

“From the day we knew the 3D printing world would be our focus, we set our sights on a SXSW premiere,” Luis Lopez, Clay Tweel, and producer Steven Klein said in a statement at that time. “To premiere in front of the most tech savvy and entrepreneurial festival crowd in the world and partner with the Netflix documentary team — who work brilliantly at the cutting edge of distribution – is truly a dream come true.”

After several months of waiting, Netflix today revealed that the documentary will debut on their streaming service worldwide on Friday, Sept. 26.

Directed and written by Luis Lopez, and J. Clay Tweel, with Steven Klein also contributing as a writer, the film tracks the progress of two main 3D printer manufacturers. The first is that of Makerbot, with their co-founder and CEO Bre Pettis, a Steve Jobs-like figure within the 3D printing space. It shows how he and his company compete as a ‘David within a business world, dominated by two ‘Goliaths’, 3D Systems and Stratasys (who has since acquired Makerbot). The other startup which the film documents is Formlabs, the brainchild of several MIT graduates, who must go up against 3D Systems in a patent infringement accusation battle.

Additionally, the film touches on the darker side of the 3D printing space, as it documents a man named Cody Wilson, and his drive to design a 3D printable gun. The film, with a runtime of 100 minutes, has already received a number of very positive reviews. It will certainly be interesting to see what kind of reaction the film receives from the public. You can watch the preview of the documentary below, and discuss it in the ‘Print The Legend’ forum thread on 3DPB.com.