Eddie Van Halen passed away after a battle with throat cancer in 2020 at just 65 years old. Two years later, Reelz is launching a documentary about his death — and his ex-wife and son are not happy about it.
Eddie’s son with Valerie Bertinelli, Wolfgang, shared his outrage with a scathing Twitter post on Wednesday calling out the network and basically anyone involved in the film from production to audience.
“F— @ReelzChannel, f— everyone that works on this show, and f— you if you watch it. F—— disgusting trying to glamorize someone’s death from cancer. Pathetic and heartless,” he wrote.
Among the comments is one from mom Valerie, who added, “Good Christ this is disgusting.” TooFab has reached out to Reelz for comment on these reactions.
According to the network, “Autopsy: The Last Hours of Eddie Van Halen” will explore the “darker undercurrent that would plague Eddie throughout his life” that they say was “behind his contagious smile.”
While the focal point of the documentary may be on his final hours, it’s also going to explore his life and career, including his “addiction issues over four decades,” even drawing into question how Eddie died from what is described as a disease with “reasonable survival rates.”
As such, the documentary touts bringing in a “world renowned forensic pathologist” to dig into Eddie’s complete life and story to see “what else may have been going on in his body, ultimately leading to his untimely death.”
With a description like that, this is being presented as something different than just a retrospective of Eddie’s life and career and tragic death, which certainly appears to be why both Wolfgang and Valerie are so staunchly against it.
Fans rallied behind the mother-and-son duo with messages of support on both Wolfgang’s initial post as well as Valerie’s comment, with others defending the show, explaining that the network only uses publicly available information for these programs.
“Autopsy: The Last Hours of Eddie Van Halen” premieres this Sunday at 8 p.m. ET on Reelz.
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