For anyone looking for a new pharmaceutical conspiracy thriller filled with award-winning actors to toss them down a captivating rabbit hole, they’ll soon be in luck. Among its seemingly never-ending list of upcoming releases, Netflix has a new pharma-thriller coming to the platform called Pain Hustlers. The streaming service recently revealed the official release date for the film set for later this Fall, on Oct. 27, according to Netflix.com.
Pain Hustlers is the latest project of director David Yates, with Wells Tower behind the screenplay. The film is based upon a bombshell 2018 New York Times Magazine article similarly titled “The Pain Hustlers,” written by Evan Hughes, and his follow-up book called The Hard Sell: Crime and Punishment at an Opioid Startup. Both of Hughes’ sources pry apart the true story of a now-bankrupt pharmaceutical startup in the early 2000s called Insys Therapeutics that ultimately grew to make millions selling one single painkiller, fentanyl, the most potent opioid available today and the center of an ongoing drug crisis.
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The film brings a visual rendition of this incredibly compelling work by Hughes through the eyes of the fictional character Liza Drake, played by Emily Blunt (A Quiet Place). Liza, wanting a better life for herself and her young daughter, chooses to work at Insys Therapeutics. Her talents soon help the company succeed while she rakes in the wealth for herself and her family. However, despite all that success, Liza unknowingly soon finds herself at the center of a criminal conspiracy that will be hard for her to escape.
Emily Blunt stars alongside Chris Evans (Knives Out), Catherine O’Hara (Schitt’s Creek), and Andy Garcia (Ocean’s Twelve). At this point, few other details are known about the film, and a trailer has yet to be released by Netflix. However, the project is in post-production, so we will likely get one relatively soon.
The Cruel, Harmful Existence of Insys Therapeutics
Netflix
The company that Hughes’ findings and the film were based on was a startup in Chandler, Arizona, owned by John Kapoor, an immigrant scientist with relentless business instincts who had already amassed a substantial fortune in pharmaceuticals. Insys Therapeutics was built up with some of the most hardline, bloodthirsty salesmen that Kapoor could find, relentlessly targeting doctors who were most susceptible to their persuasion. Their main product was fentanyl, a drug that was only meant for late-stage cancer patients and instead became one of the most widely distributed hard opioids and a Wall Street sensation.
However, certain employees on the inside got pushed to their limits and blew the whistle. The entire ruse came crashing down with a bedrock-deep criminal investigation that led to one of the most dramatic courtroom battles ever and sparked an ongoing fight against opioids like fentanyl and the pharma giants that continue to peddle them to millions of Americans. After numerous executives were charged with multiple counts of racketeering, Insys Therapeutics officially went bankrupt in 2019.
