Rob Reiner will be featured in the new HBO Max doc Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man!, making it the first project involving Reiner to be released since his tragic death on December 14, 2025.

The two-part film, which debuts on Thursday, January 22 at 8/7c on HBO and HBO Max, tells the story of Blazing Saddles and Spaceballs director Brooks’ outstanding career, which began in the 1950s in New York’s Borscht Belt stand-up comedy circuit, and continues into the present. Directed by Judd Apatow and Michael Bonfiglio, the documentary will dive into Brooks’ past using archival footage and interviews with peers, costars and fans, including, in addition to Reiner, Ben Stiller, Jerry Seinfeld, Adam Sandler, Dave Chappelle, Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Kimmel, Amy Schumer, Sarah Silverman, Robert Townsend, Peter Farrelly, Jerry & David Zucker, Barry Levinson, David Lynch, Bill Pullman, Daphne Zuniga, Cary Elwes, Matthew Broderick, Nathan Lane and more, as well as Brooks himself and his family.

Rob Reiner had a special relationship with Brooks, as his father, Carl Reiner, was Brooks’ longtime comedy partner. Their iconic sketch “The 2,000 Year Old Man,” in which Reiner would play an interviewer interrogating Brooks, a caveman still alive in the present, not only turned up on multiple comedy albums and became a book and an animated special; it became one of the foundations of the absurdist comedy Brooks and Reiner became known for.

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Even more intimately, Brooks and Reiner had spent most of their lives as best friends; in a 2025 interview with Variety, Rob Reiner recalled that “For years [after their wives had passed away], my dad and Mel Brooks would have dinner and watch TV, every single night — they were best friends.” Brooks was the last person to see Carl Reiner before he passed in 2020, at the age of 98; he died immediately after they spent the evening watching TV together.

In the same interview, Reiner revealed that in the months following Carl’s death, Brooks continued his routine of coming by the house: “Mel, even after my dad died, would come to the house very night, for months and months and months, by himself, and sit there and watch television and have dinner. Even long after my father died. And he said to me and my brother, ‘You’ve got to give me a little warning when you’re going to sell the house, you’ll want to tell me ahead of time.’ And I told him, ‘Well, Mel, maybe we’ll just stage the house with you in it and up the value!’ They were best friends. They loved each other, and I’m glad they had each other at the end of life. It’s good to have somebody that you can hang with.”

The first part of Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man! will premiere on Thursday, January 22 at 8/7c on HBO and HBO Max, with part 2 airing on Friday, January 23, at at 8/7c. Both parts will be available to stream on the HBO Max app beginning on January 22.