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International Business Times UK
International Business Times UK
Entertainment
Annalyn Zoglmann

Ozzy's Last Days: New Paramount+ Documentary Lifts the Lid on Rock Legend's Health Battles

Jack Osbourne with parents Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne. Jack said Ozzy's botched neck surgery made him 'so angry.' (Credit: Instagram/Jack Osbourne)

KEY POINTS

  • New Paramount+ documentary Ozzy: No Escape From Now chronicles the rock icon's devastating health decline.
  • Family members reveal how a botched 2018 neck surgery and worsening Parkinson's disease left Ozzy in pain.

For the last six years of his life, Ozzy Osbourne fought a war against his own body. When Paramount+ releases Ozzy: No Escape From Now on 7 October, audiences will witness the final, brutal dispatches from that front line.

What began as a documentary conceived during his lifetime has become, following his death in July 2025 at age 76, an intimate and unflinching portrait of a legend confronting his own mortality.

In the two-hour film, Ozzy appears in interviews recorded just before his passing, alongside his widow Sharon, his children Kelly and Jack, and even his reclusive eldest daughter, Aimee. A cadre of musicians—including Billy Idol, Slash, and fellow rock stalwarts—add perspective on his final creative chapters.

The Journey Through Health & Legacy

The documentary covers the making of Ozzy's 2020 album Ordinary Man and 2022's Patient Number 9, framing those works against his mounting medical challenges. It also revisits career landmarks: his triumphant return with Black Sabbath at the 2022 Commonwealth Games closing ceremony, his 2024 induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and his farewell concert in Birmingham just weeks before he died.

One of the film's most shocking revelations is that after a fall in February 2018, Ozzy had been gravely misdiagnosed. In early interviews, Kelly recounts her father being rushed to the hospital, only to be dismissed and sent home. 'The next day, he couldn't move his arms,' Sharon recalled. 'The following day at a different hospital, they told us he'd broken his f—king neck.'

The narrative takes an even darker turn when family testimony accuses a subsequent surgery of exacerbating his decline. Sharon claims the surgical screws installed during that procedure became loose and chipped away at his bones. 'They put metal plates and surgical screws in him, 'which didn't need doing,' and 'caused even more damage,'' she states.

Their son Jack reinforces this view: 'The Parkinson's is progressing, but the main problem is the nerve damage from the bad neck surgery. That f-king doctor stripped him of his abilities to move.'

Trailer of new Ozzy documentary

Mind, Body, and the Cost of Survival

Beyond the spine injury, Ozzy contended with pneumonia, sepsis, and the crushing toll of chronic illness. In one moment captured in the documentary, he admits that the weight of his suffering drove him to the brink.

'I was ready to off myself,' he confesses. 'I'd f—king set myself on fire... knowing me, I'd half-do it and I'd be half-dead.'

Even amid breakdown, music became his refuge. 'The making of the album saved my ass,' Ozzy says. 'I'm the luckiest man in the world to do what I do... Because a lot of people have f—king jobs... they absolutely hate.'

In lighter tones, he jokes, 'That's the thing about getting older: I used to take pills for fun. Now I take them to stay alive.'

He also reflects with sober gratitude: 'I didn't think I was gonna live past 40... But I did. And if my life's coming to an end, I really can't complain. I had a great life.'

Aimee Breaks Her Silence

One emotional anchor of No Escape From Now is Aimee Osbourne's rare on-screen interview. Having largely shunned public life, she speaks about the difficulty of watching her parents slow down.

'They were both so used to the 'go go go'.... To have those things essentially break away has been heartbreaking and terrifying.'

She also offers a unique perspective on Sharon's role through the ordeal: 'My mom's role has been maintaining control of all the moving parts... to have those things... break away has been extremely painful.'

Her voice, contrasting so sharply with her past silence, signifies a fuller family reckoning and adds profound depth to the film's emotional core.

Beyond the Myth, the Man

While the documentary was not originally conceived as a posthumous tribute, Ozzy's death at 76—officially due to cardiac arrest, coronary artery disease, acute myocardial infarction, and Parkinson's disease—invests the film with a somber urgency. The documentary stands not merely as a witness to decline but as a testament to his creative resilience to the very end.

'This is Ozzy Osbourne like you've never seen before,' the production notes promise. Sharon has said the film offers an 'honest account of what has happened to Ozzy... how hard things have been for him.'

In that light, the documentary's greatest success may lie beyond its shocking revelations. It is in affording Ozzy his humanity: the humour, stubbornness, pride, fear, and love that animated his life as much as the legend ever did. The viewer is invited not just to mourn the metal icon, but to grieve the man who lived within him.

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