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The Sunshine Place, the ratings-topping and award-winning documentary podcast that counts Robert Downey Jr. as one of its executive producers, will devote its second season to a topic with which the Oscar-winning actor feels a personal connection: a controversial ‘tough-love’ teen rehab program.

The podcast’s first season, which focused on the early behavior-modification rehab Synanon, hit No. 1 on the Apple Podcasts chart and won the 2023 Deadline Club Award for audio investigative reporting. Its second season will examine Straight Inc., which emerged in the 1980s, was endorsed by First Lady Nancy Reagan and swept the nation — but also, according to survivors who speak to The Sunshine Place, employed abuse, torture and brainwashing.

Season two will launch with the posting of its first two episodes on Oct. 30; additional episodes will be released weekly on Wednesdays through Dec. 11. (The trailer for season two can be heard here.) Executive producers include Downey, his...

Downey’s Dream Cars on Max and Christian Cooper of National Geographic’s Extraordinary Birder with Christian Cooper were among the winners Saturday night the 51st Daytime Creative Arts & Lifestyle Emmys.

Held a day after the Daytime Emmys at downtown Los Angeles’ Westin Bonaventure Hotel, the Creative Arts & Lifestyle awards honored legal/courtroom dramas, travel/adventure programs, and arts and culture shows, as well as lighting and technical direction specialists and costumers, cinematographers and hairstylists.

Among the winners was Amazon Freevee’s Judy Justice for best Legal/Courtroom Program. The Kelly Clarkson Show, which picked up its fourth consecutive talk-show win the night before, scored two more wins Saturday, for lighting design and live sound mixing/editing.

Multiple winners Saturday also included Nat Geo’s Animals Up Close with Bertie Gregory, Netflix’s Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones, and Netflix’s African Queens: Njinga.

See the complete list of winners below.

Robert Downey Jr. took a long look at his impressive car collection and asked himself a tough question: “You schmuck … what are you trying to prove?” So explained the actor during a recent sit-down with THR’s Scott Feinberg when asked about his upcoming Discovery+ docuseries Downey’s Dream Cars.

The unscripted series — produced by Team Downey, the production banner he founded with wife Susan, along with Boat Rocker Media’s Matador Content — will see a team of experts re­imagine his prized cars to be more eco-friendly. “I’m going to sweepstakes them and donate all the proceeds to green tech companies,” he said as part of the chat that focused primarily on his Netflix doc Sr., “because this will be my legacy.”

When the unscripted series was announced last year, Downey said in a statement that his goal was “to showcase that it’s possible to keep the...

To watch “‘Sr.’” on Netflix is to know Robert Downey Jr. and director Chris Smith were, in a sense, winging it by the time production started on the documentary portrait of the star/producer’s late filmmaker father. But Downey told IndieWire over Zoom that the seed of the idea was there a decade before he ever met the “Fyre” filmmaker. “‘We should do a documentary about fathers and sons.’ ‘All right. Would we be in it?’ ‘Maybe. Who knows,’” said the actor, mimicking a conversation he had with the New York-accented Sr., still tickled by the eccentric director’s pitch.

“My dad went down to North Carolina and was following George Hamilton on a tour he was doing for ‘La Cage aux Folles.’ Then he started interviewing him and [his son] Ashley,” said Downey. “Anyway, there’s a super long answer to this. I’ll just stop myself short. There’s...

NYFF screenings sets for October 10, 11.

Netflix has acquired Sr., Chris Smith’s Telluride documentary about Robert Downey Sr., father to Robert Downey Jr., ahead of its next stop at New York Film Festival (NYFF).

The film focuses on the filmmaker and explores art, mortality, and healing generational dysfunction. Downey Sr.’s directing credits include the documentary Rittenhouse Square, as well as Hugo Pool, Too Much Sun, and episodes of The Twilight Zone.

Team Downey’s Susan Downey, Robert Downey Jr., Emily Barclay Ford and Kevin Ford served as producers.

Sr. will screen at NYFF on October 10 and 11 and drop on...

Netflix has acquired the worldwide rights to “Sr.,” a documentary film about the life of the late filmmaker Robert Downey Sr. as directed by Chris Smith (“Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond”) and produced by his son Robert Downey Jr.

“Sr.” first made its world premiere at this year’s Telluride Film Festival. The film is described as a “lovingly irreverent portrait of the life and career of maverick filmmaker Robert Downey Sr. that quickly devolves into a meditation on art, mortality, and healing generational dysfunction.”

Team Downey’s Susan Downey, Robert Downey Jr. and Emily Barclay Ford are all producing the film, as is Kevin Ford. The film is a co-production between Team Downey and Library Films.

Netflix plans to release the documentary film later this year. It will next play the New York Film Festival with screenings on Oct. 10 and Oct. 11.

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Sr., a documentary feature about the maverick independent filmmaker Robert Downey Sr. that was directed by Chris Smith (Fyre) and counts Robert Downey Jr. among its producers, has been acquired by Netflix and will receive a full-fledged Oscar push from the streamer this season, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.

Downey Jr., who attended the film’s world premiere earlier this month at the Telluride Film Festival (where THR reviewed it as “unique and affecting”), intends to hit the campaign trail on behalf of the project about his father (who died at 85 in July 2021), which will drop on the streamer before the end of the year.

The film, which explores Downey Sr.’s life and work (he is best known for the 1969 Madison Ave. satire Putney Swope), as well as themes ranging from mortality to healing generational dysfunction (the relationship between Sr. and Jr.

Robert Downey Jr. and his wife Susan Downey are boarding the podcasting bus.

The duo are moving into the audio medium with an investigative audio series about the Synanon cult.

The Sunshine Place tells the story of the former California-based experimental drug rehab facility and community that morphed into a dangerous and violent cult, led by its messianic founder Charles E. Diedrich.

The series comes from Team Downey and Wink Pictures for Audacy-owned Cadence13.

The Sunshine Place will tell the story of Synanon from the inside out, and by the people who lived it, charting its rise and exploring its decade-long reign over 1960s and ‘70s counterculture through the recollections of members, survivors and dedicated chroniclers. The series will be narrated by Sari Crawford, daughter of a former Synanon leader Bill Crawford.

The eight-part series will launch August 10. Listen to a trailer below.

Synanon was called “the miracle on the beach” in Santa Monica,...

The “Bridgerton” literary universe is expanding. Original series writer Julia Quinn and Shonda Rhimes, the executive producer of the romance series’ Netflix adaptation, are set to cowrite a new prequel novel set in the world of “Bridgerton.”

Currently untitled, the new book series is based on the universe of the TV series, and is an adaptation of the upcoming Netflix “Bridgerton” spinoff about a young Queen Charlotte. The book will tell the story of how Charlotte met and married King George, with a focus on how their love lead to a social shift that created the racially inclusive world seen in the television series.

“Queen Charlotte has been such a moving character to write and now having the opportunity to work with Julia to adapt this story into a book is such an exciting opportunity,” Rhimes said in a statement. “I can’t wait for fans of this universe to...

Discovery Channel has greenlighted a new wildlife series titled The Bond, which hails from Team Downey and Glen Zipper.

The four-part series, which focuses on the bond between animals and humans, is executive produced by Robert Downey Jr., Susan Downey and Emily Barclay Ford of Team Downey and writer-producer Glen Zipper, co-author of the sci-fi novel Devastation Class and creator of the documentary series Dogs on Netflix.

The Bond takes an up-close look at the unique bond between animals and humans and will spotlight these relationships around the world. The series aims tell moving, and surprising, stories of men, women and children ...

Discovery Channel has greenlighted a new wildlife series titled The Bond, which hails from Team Downey and Glen Zipper.

The four-part series, which focuses on the bond between animals and humans, is executive produced by Robert Downey Jr., Susan Downey and Emily Barclay Ford of Team Downey and writer-producer Glen Zipper, co-author of the sci-fi novel Devastation Class and creator of the documentary series Dogs on Netflix.

The Bond takes an up-close look at the unique bond between animals and humans and will spotlight these relationships around the world. The series aims tell moving, and surprising, stories of men, women and children ...