For Your Own Good HBO Max - What We Know So Far

HBO Max has a new mysterious drama in the works. After the success of shows such as "Big Little Lies" and, more recently, "Mare of Easttown," the streaming service is continuing to invest in content with captivating and enigmatic storylines, bound to keep the viewer invested and guessing along the way.

The new show in the works is titled "For Your Own Good" and will center on a prestigious New England school called Belmont Academy, where a string of mysterious poisonings arise. The series will be based on the upcoming novel by mysterious writer Samantha Downing, who will also serve as a consulting producer on the series.

"For Your Own Good" will be produced collaboratively by Robert Downey Jr.'s and Greg Berlanti's respective production companies, Team Downey and Berlanti Productions. Team Downey, which the actor runs with his wife and producing partner Susan Downey, recently signed a first-look deal with HBO (via The Hollywood Reporter). With this one-year deal, Team Downey committed to working on new projects specifically for HBO, with their first collaboration being the period drama "Perry Mason," which premiered in June 2020.

Here's everything else we know so far about "For Your Own Good."

As of now, there is no release date for "For Your Own Good." At least not for the adapted television show, that is — the novel that will act as the source material hasn't actually been published yet, but it will be released into bookstores on July 20, 2021.

The series is still in the very early development stages. In fact, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed that the producers are even still looking for a screenwriter to adapt the novel into the series.

For reference, we can look at Team Downey's last project for HBO, "Perry Mason." Some of the earliest news involving "Perry Mason" was the casting of its star, Matthew Rhys, which was announced in January of 2019, as reported by Variety. The series then premiered about a year and a half later, in July of the following year. Since "For Your Own Good" has not yet cast a lead — and the script isn't written yet — we can assume that we're at least a few months away from hearing casting news. So, an approximate estimation of when we might see the release of "For Your Own Good" lands about two years from now. If all goes well, we'll see the new HBO drama in the summer of 2023 — if not, hopefully, sooner.

Unfortunately, we don't have any news on who will be appearing in "For Your Own Good" as of yet. Back when "Perry Mason" was in development for Team Downey, many of Robert Downey Jr.'s fans expected to see him take on the leading role. Instead, Downey stuck solely to the behind-the-scenes role of producer, leaving Matthew Rhys to take on — and excel at — the titular Perry Mason character.

While it's totally possible that Downey will step into an acting role for "For Your Own Good," it's also just as likely that he'll run into the same problem as he did with "Perry Mason." "Perry Mason" writer-showrunners Rolin Jones and Ron Fitzgerald told Looper in an interview that Downey wanted to act in his producing project but just couldn't find the time. Fitzgerald said, "Perry Mason has always been a special project for him. He has a lot of personal love for it, and he really, really wanted to do it. But every time we could get close to it, he could never line his schedule up." On his job as a producer, Jones added, "[He] just became sort of a notes [provider] and a macro lens on the whole thing. I think he's been really instrumental on the front and the back side of the show."

Even if Downey doesn't appear as a character in "For Your Own Good," we can expect him to play just as much of a dedicated producing role as he did with "Perry Mason." And, like with "Perry Mason," we're sure the cast choices will be just as perfect when they're made and announced.

While we know very little about the show in production, there is plenty of information about Downing's forthcoming book, as the publication date quickly approaches. According to the Penguin Random House official site, "For Your Own Good" focuses on Teddy Crutcher, an educator who has just won Teacher of the Year at the prestigious Belmont University. As a string of deaths arises — which start looking more and more like murder cases — the peculiarities about Teddy become more apparent. From talking about a wife who hasn't been seen in ages to disregarding the possible murders, Teddy's behavior only seems more strange.

We can expect the potential series to stick to a similar storyline, at the very least, if not follow closely to the events of the novel. Downing's story has received an abundance of praise already, with B.A. Paris (the New York Times bestselling author of "Behind Closed Doors") writing, "Just finished reading this wonderfully dark, twisty and compelling thriller set in a prestigious private school. I raced through it, desperate to know how it would end."

If we're lucky, the upcoming television version of "For Your Own Good" will be just as compelling as its source material.