There’s a thin line between pain and pleasure, and if you’re not careful, people looking to get rich off your threshold will take advantage. Netflix‘s new Painkiller trailer looks at the ongoing opioid crisis, with the war between medicine and money raging like roaring wildfire in certain parts of the world. According to Netflix, Painkiller presents a 6-episode series exploring the “how” and the “who” of the epidemic.
Here’s the official synopsis for Painkiller:
A fictionalized retelling of events, Painkiller is a scripted limited series that explores some of the origins and aftermath of the opioid crisis in America, highlighting the stories of the perpetrators, victims, and truth-seekers whose lives are forever altered by the invention of OxyContin. An examination of crime, accountability, and the systems that have repeatedly failed hundreds of thousands of Americans, Painkiller is based on the book “Pain Killer” by Barry Meier and the New Yorker Magazine article ‘The Family That Built anthe Empire of Pain’ by Patrick Radden Keefe.
In the Painkiller trailer, Matthew Broderick’s Richard Sackler becomes a kingpin of pain while orchestrating the distribution of OxyContin. This drug alters how your body feels and responds to pain. Higher doses of the drug can lead to addiction and, in some cases, death. Meanwhile, Uzo Aduba’s Edie investigates Sackler’s plan to get rich from the suffering of others. West Duchovny, Dina Shihabi, Taylor Kitsch, Sam Anderson, Carolina Bartczak, Jack Mulhern, Ana Cruz Kayne, Brian Markinson, and more also star as primary cast members.
“The story is still going on. It’s playing out in real-time, and I imagine that it will continue to play out long after us. It’s a story that’s so big and so awful that it deserves to be told as often and as loudly as it can be,” executive producer Eric Newman said during a TUDUM conversation.
“Everyone knows that the opioid crisis is bad,” Painkiller director and executive producer Pete Berg says. “But this is the origin story of the collision between medicine and money that allowed it to happen. One of the many things that I thought was missing [from the conversation about OxyContin] was the introduction of the drug into mainstream medicine. How Arthur Sackler, this psychiatrist from New York who specialized in lobotomies, started to realize that the future was in pills — specifically in advertising pills. Whoever could market their drug better was going to make the most money.”
Netflix’s new limited series, inspired by actual events based on America’s opioid crisis, premieres on Thursday, August 10, 2023.