Zac Efron and Netflix are being sued over travel series Down To Earth, after a company of the same name claimed the show tarnished its brand.
The programme, which premiered on Netflix in 2020, saw Efron travel around the world in search of healthy and sustainable ways to live, joined by wellness expert Darin Olien.
"Food, water and energy are all the main staples for modern life. We're going to see some top eco innovators to see how change is an inside job. And we're going to be eating really, really well," the star said in the trailer.
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"We need to start rethinking how we consume everything, from our food to our power.
“Change has to start somewhere. Maybe it's about time we all changed. It's time to get down to Earth."
In a complaint filed in Manhattan federal court yesterday, Friday 22 July, Down to Earth Organics LLC said the actor and streaming service misled consumers with the show.
The company sells a range of products including fruit and herb-infused drinks, snack bars and T-shirts, and has produced 65 episodes on health, wellness and related topics since April 2020, the complaint states.
The lifestyle brand said it filed for a trademark for its snack bars back in 2018, along with one for its podcast in April 2020 – three months before Down to Earth debuted on Netflix.
It is also arguing that Netflix gave viewers the false impression that it was involved in producing the series, while claiming the show tarnished its brand with inaccurate and ‘potentially fraudulent’ health claims.
According to Reuters, the complaint does not elaborate on the allegedly false claims, but cites a July 2020 article by Jonathan Jarry of McGill University's Office for Science and Society, which describes Efron’s show as ‘insidious nonsense’.
Joel Dichter, an attorney for Down to Earth Organics LLC, said the show tarnished the company's brand by spreading misinformation about wellness.
"My client could not just sit back and let Zac Efron, Darin Olien and Netflix go on to a new season without accountability for their actions," he said.
In the Netflix series, we saw Efron and Olien travel to a number of locations around the globe, including Iceland, Lima, Sardinia, London and Puerto Rico, picking up 'new perspectives on some very old problems' along the way.
The pair also took on various eco-tasks such as beekeeping and cleaning out plastic pollution from the River Thames.
UNILAD has reached out to Netflix for comment.
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Jess Hardiman