Netflix’s upcoming limited series “Painkiller” is lifting the veil on America’s opioid crisis, investigating the role of one family in making OxyContin “the No. 1 opioid in the country.”
“All of human behavior is essentially comprised of two things: run from pain, run toward pleasure; pain, pleasure,” Matthew Broderick’s Richard Sackler said in the series’ official trailer. “If we place ourselves right there between pain and pleasure, we will never have to worry about money again.”
As the Sackler dynasty’s Purdue Pharma recruits a batch of fresh-faced sales workers who they claim will convince doctors to “take pain seriously,” an investor from the U.S. attorneys office (Uzo Aduba) is determined to take the family responsible for countless deaths down.
“You lie, you hurt people, you go down,” Aduba said. “They are doing the exact same thing as crack dealers but they are getting rewarded it.”
The six-part fictional series, which premieres Aug. 10 on Netflix, will spotlight “stories of the perpetrators, victims, and truth-seekers whose lives are forever altered by the invention of OxyContin,” per the official logline.
Based on the book of the same name by Barry Meier as well as Patrick Radden Keefe’s article in The New Yorker titled “The Family That Built the Empire of Pain,” Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster serve as creators, showrunners, writers and executive producers. EPs for the series also include Eric Newman, Peter Berg and Alex Gibney. Berg also directs the series and Meier also serves as consulting producer.
In addition to Aduba and Broderick, the cast for “Painkiller” is rounded out by Taylor Kitsch, Dina Shihabi, John Rothman and West Duchovny. Guest stars for the series include Clark Gregg, Jack Mulhern, Sam Anderson, Ana Cruz Kayne, Brian Markinson, Noah Harpster, John Ales, Johnny Sneed and Tyler Ritter.
“Painkiller” premieres Thursday, Aug. 10 on Netflix.
