New Shiny Happy People Dives Into Teenage Holy War
Today, Prime Video released the official trailer and key art for the upcoming highly anticipated docuseries Shiny Happy People: A Teenage Holy War.
The three-part docuseries, executive produced by Blye Faust and Cori Shepherd, the award-winning team behind Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets, premieres on July 23 on Prime Video.
Directed by the Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning filmmakers Nicole Newnham and Cori Shepherd, Shiny Happy People: A Teenage Holy War focuses on the controversial organization Teen Mania, once America’s largest youth ministry, which attracted millions through their wildly popular stadium shows known as “Acquire the Fire.”
The series bursts with peak Millennial nostalgia and cringe, featuring colossal stadiums filled with teens enraptured by religious rock anthems, inspired to swear purity oaths and eagerly embark by the thousands on culturally questionable global missions.
But beneath the wholesome youth group illusion lies a darker undercurrent: a high-pressure pipeline of brutal spiritual boot camps, surreal role-playing scenarios, and relentless psychological control – all under the command of a charismatic leader with endlessly expanding ambitions.
Faust, Shepherd, and Newnham serve as executive producers for the new season alongside Lauren Andrade and Eric Cook. Shiny Happy People: A Teenage Holy War is produced by Amazon MGM Studios (The Summer I Turned Pretty) and Story Force Entertainment.
Story Force Entertainment, led by Oscar- and Emmy-winning producers Blye Faust and Cori Shepherd, focuses on elevated premium entertainment for scripted and nonfiction film, television, and audio.
Past Story Force projects include the Amazon docuseries smash hits LuLaRich and Shiny Happy People. The company’s other unscripted projects include the feature documentary Zurawski v Texas, produced in partnership with Hidden Light, with executive producers Jennifer Lawrence, Hillary Clinton, and Chelsea Clinton, which premiered at the 2024 Telluride Film Festival.
There’s also The Grab, a 2024 Magnolia Pictures/Participant Media feature documentary that is nominated for four 2025 News & Documentary Emmy Awards; Bending the Arc, a 2020 Netflix feature documentary; Belly of the Beast, a 2020 Emmy award-winning and Peabody-nominated documentary released by PBS/Independent Lens; Oscar-nominated HBO documentary Open Heart; and Collisions, an Emmy Award winner that premiered at Sundance.
Story Force’s scripted projects include 2015 feature film Spotlight, which was awarded Best Motion Picture and Best Original Screenplay at the 2016 Academy Awards, and Warm Bodies, a global box office hit feature film for Lionsgate.
