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As Hurricane Helene made landfall in the Southeast U.S. last fall, filmmakers Phil Hessler and Cole Sax were tracking a group of veterans — the Team Rubicon “Greyshirts” — who deploy into disaster zones to help however is needed. “These people mobilize within 24 hours,” Sax tells Variety. “The bat signal goes up and they’re out!”

So, within a day of Helene hitting the Carolinas, Team Rubicon was on the ground, with the filmmakers and their skeleton crew capturing it all.

“It was pretty intense,” Hessler says of trekking with the team to Asheville, North Carolina. “There was no power in the entire town, so we stayed in a hotel that didn’t have any electricity, and the gas stations were running out of gas,” he recalls. “I’d never been in a scene like that before. To experience firsthand what people go through when a storm hits was incredibly powerful to see,...

YouTube is launching four originals timed for the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympic Games, hoping to get in on the action for the global sporting event of the summer.

The nonfiction programming from the Google-owned video giant features American gymnast Gabby Douglas, who was the 2012 Olympic all-around champion, and The Try Guys — Keith Habersberger, Ned Fulmer, Zach Kornfeld and Eugene Lee Yang — the YouTube comedy foursome who launched their careers at BuzzFeed.

The YouTube originals are all premiering ahead of the start of the Tokyo Olympics, which are taking place July 23-Aug. 8 after being rescheduled because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Here’s a rundown of the four projects, which are part of YouTube’s learning originals:

“Strive” – Premieres June 30 on The Players’ Tribune YouTube channel: Six-part docuseries hosted by USA Olympic champion gymnast Gabby Douglas follows the journey of refugee athletes to compete either under the Olympic Refugee Flag or under...