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Netflix is getting into the Olympic spirit with its newest batch of sports documentaries.

The streamer has partnered with the International Olympic Committee on three series following gymnastics superstar Simone Biles and athletes in men’s basketball and track and field. Filmmaking teams for the three shows will gain access to the athletes and venues at the summer games in Paris.

Separately, Netflix has ordered a series about the Dallas Cowboys and owner Jerry Jones, with a focus on the team’s dominant years in the early and mid-1990s. The company made the announcements as part of its first-ever upfront on Wednesday — where it also announced its biggest push into live sports so far with a deal to carry NFL games on Christmas for the next three years.

Biles’ return for her third Olympics will be chronicled in Simone Biles: Rising, which will run in two parts. The first...

Bon Jovi fans eagerly anticipate Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story, a Hulu documentary celebrating the band’s 40-year career. Director Gotham Chopra had access to thousands of Jon Bon Jovi’s personal artifacts. He used these to flesh out details of the band’s journey to the top of the charts.

Chopra revealed exclusively to Showbiz Cheat Sheet that his biggest challenge was whittling down all that information to create a cohesive four-part documentary fascinating to both casual and dedicated Bon Jovi fans.

Bon Jovi’s 40-year history amounted to a massive collection of material

Gotham Chopra, the director of Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story, has a long history of creating cohesive stories from generational careers. The production team behind the documentary is Religion of Sports, founded by Chopra, Michael Strahan, and Tom Brady.

Before Thank You, Goodnight, Chopra worked on documentaries detailing the lives of...

Matt Roe has been named head of unscripted for production company Dirty Robber, The Unreasnble, led by Travon Free, Martin Desmond Roe, and Mickey Meyer.

Roe is an Emmy-nominated producer, director, and writer with more than ten years of development and production experience making unscripted premium content.

Starting his career as a story producer, Roe helped shape such projects Kobe Bryant’s Muse for Showtime, The Last Walk Off with David Ortiz for ESPN, and Tom vs. Tom for Facebook.

As a director, he has made content for companies like Religion of Sports and Uninterrupted. As a showrunner, he has helmed the Audience Network’s anthology series Religion of Sports and ESPN Why We Fight.

In addition to his creative credits, Roe has spent the last few years leading development at Dirty Robber during a time when it landed projects such as Heist and We Are The Champions for Netflix,...

Well before NFL star Tom Brady retired from professional football, his off-field legacy was beginning to take shape through a business that’s grown from a handful of people dedicated to optimizing the quarterback’s social media opportunities to a multidimensional creative studio with about 20 employees across the country.

The company is called Shadow Lion, and it was founded in 2017 by a core team including Brady’s longtime manager Ben Rawitz, Jeff Fine (who happens to be Rawitz’s brother), and Gilad Haas who previously worked for Brady’s New England Patriots teammate Julian Edelman. The firm is one of a few celebrity founded marketing agencies — think: Ryan Reynolds’ Maximum Effort — that have cropped up in recent years.

The buzzy Hertz commercials? That was them. The Emmy-winning series Tom vs. Time? They worked on that, alongside Religion of Sports, too.

But in the years since the creative studio was founded...

The title for Showtime documentary series “Shut Up and Dribble” was inspired by LeBron James’ feud with Fox News host Laura Ingraham last February, but the project had been in the works long before that.

“I don’t believe in coincidences … that it took two years to make and got released now after the world has become increasingly politicized is very synchronistic,” director Gotham Chopra told TheWrap. “When we first started, it was going to be equal parts social impact and cultural impact — and there was going to be more basketball in it — but this just felt like a natural evolution of the project and the conversation.”

James clearly didn’t heed Ingraham’s advice to “keep the political comments” to himself and instead used her words against her on the three-part series that he executive produced along with Maverick Carter and Chopra. Former ESPN anchor Jemele Hill, who has...

Most people avoid talking about their age. Tom Brady is letting a documentary filmmaker track his battle with it. As the New England Patriots prepare for Saturday’s divisional playoff game against the Tennessee Titans, Brady is trying to become the oldest quarterback to ever win a Super Bowl. The 40-year-old Qb’s quest for a sixth ring is the subject of a new docu-series titled “Tom vs. Time” from filmmaker and “Religion of Sports” creator Gotham Chopra. Airing on Facebook Watch, the six-episode series is a blunt look at Brady’s life, revealing the intense mental and physical preparation he relies on to continue...

The At&T Audience Network is poised to explore the Religion of Sports. The DirecTV and U-verse network has picked up six episodes of the docuseries set to examine the unique examples of sports' cultural and often spiritual impact in regions around the world. Created by New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and NFL Hall of Famer Michael Strahan as well as filmmaker Gotham Chopra, the series will bow Nov. 15, at 8 p.m. Et. Christopher Long, Bart Peters, Constance Schwartz-Morini, Martin Desmond Roe and Chris Uettwiller will exec produce alongside Brady, Strahan and Chopra. Each hourlong episode

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