Limited series Painkiller charts some of the origins of the opioid crisis. Though the tense drama is a fictionalized retelling of events, its foundation is extensive research.
Executive produced by Eric Newman and Pete Berg (who also directs), and created and written by Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster, Painkiller’s foundation is two written sources: the 2003 book Pain Killer by Barry Meier (which was released in an updated edition in 2018) and the 2017 New Yorker article, “The Family That Built an Empire of Pain” by Patrick Radden Keefe (which was later expanded into Keefe’s 2021 book Empire of Pain).
“Barry Meier saw this coming a long time ago as a reporter for The New York Times and his 2003 book became required reading in understanding the epidemic,” Newman (Narcos, Narcos: Mexico, Griselda) told Netflix during production. “Keefe’s article about the Sackler family, specifically about their role in the crisis, was a touchstone for us as well. Having them as consultants and producers, along with the legendary Alex Gibney, has been invaluable — as was the work and the amazing reporting they had done.” Or as Harpster simply puts it, “They’re just walking encyclopedias on the Sacklers and the opioid crisis.”
For Newman, the heart of Painkiller is “trying to understand how this all started, so that we can maybe finally stop it.” As of 2020, over 40 people die in the US from overdoses involving prescription opioid every single day.
Opioid drugs are a class of drugs used to reduce pain, hence the name “painkiller.” The opioid crisis has been tied to the marketing of OxyContin (which contains the opioid oxycodone), which was followed by a massive increase in the use and abuse of opioid drugs. “OxyContin is a drug that has some valuable medical uses,” Gibney said during production. “But when it was marketed too broadly, without concern for its dangers, it was inappropriately and too widely prescribed, which led to massive addiction. That spilled out over, and over, and over again in communities across North America.”
Purdue Pharma put OxyContin on the market in 1996, and, through promotional efforts, the sales of OxyContin escalated from $44 million (316,000 prescriptions dispensed) in 1996 to a 2001 and 2002 combined sales of nearly $3 billion (over 14 million prescriptions). Purdue spent roughly $200 million in 2001 alone on the marketing and promotion of OxyContin.
The research behind the production of Painkiller reaches back to a New York Times editor receiving a tip from a pharmacy regulator in early 2001 who said, “Hey there’s this new drug on the street and it’s running wild,” said Meier, who was among the first journalists covering the opioid crisis. “It was really strange because the sales representatives for the company were telling doctors and pharmacists that this new drug was less prone to abuse than competing painkillers.”
Meier told Netflix that back then, “No one, not even people in the drug industry, knew much about Purdue or the family that owned it, the Sacklers.” His reporting became the jumping-off point for his book, and, around the same time, the Department of Justice started investigating Purdue’s marketing of OxyContin, bringing criminal charges against the company and three top executives in 2007. “As a journalist, seeing your reporting having an impact like that is why we do what we do.”
To this day, the Sacklers have never been criminally charged in connection with OxyContin or the opioid epidemic. Purdue has pled guilty to federal crimes twice, in 2007 and 2020, in relation to deceptive marketing that misled regulators, doctors, and patients, and downplayed the risks of becoming addicted to OxyContin. Sackler family members say they were unaware of any wrongdoing by Purdue executives.
Writer and investigative journalist Keefe came to the opioid crisis and big pharma through his reporting on the drug cartels in Mexico. “I noticed that in 2010, the Sinaloa Cartel started sending more heroin across the border into the United States,” he told Netflix. “Why would they suddenly supply more heroin? The answer turned out to be the opioid crisis. There was a generation of Americans who had started using heroin after having this on-ramp, which was prescription painkillers like OxyContin.”
As he investigated further, Keefe read Meier’s book (“We’re all standing on the shoulders of Barry Meier, to be honest with you.”) and wanted to focus tightly on the Sackler family for his 2017 article. “That’s not to say nobody else is to blame for the opioid crisis […] but I do think they played a special role,” he said. “I wanted to provide a close-up look at this very wealthy American dynasty, and try to figure out how much moral responsibility they have for this terrible public health crisis that has killed so many people.”
Harpster and Fitzerman-Blue started mapping out the series when they read Meier’s book and articles in The New York Times and optioned the rights in 2016. They then reached out to him on Twitter to see if Meier would let them develop his work into a series.
Meanwhile, documentarian Gibney (see 2021’s The Crime of the Century which also explores the opioid crisis) had optioned his friend Keefe’s article after it was published in 2017. After learning of the competing narrative project, they thought “ ‘Better to form common cause with each other and work all together,’ ” said Gibney. From making his documentary, he’d gleaned that the opioid crisis “is not something that just happened. It was really a crime.” Adding that “to understand the crime, you have to understand how the criminals [Purdue Pharma] worked.” He also uncovered promotional videos made by Purdue that were useful to the production.
Keefe took the idea to Newman, who, particularly given his experience with Narcos, was interested in the subject matter. “To me, it was important that this is fundamentally a crime story, which is part of what makes Eric the ideal producer for this show,” said Keefe.
Gibney added, “Eric saw the beauty of it and helped persuade Netflix to take it on board, and then hired Pete Berg to direct.”
Because it’s ongoing. “It’s playing out in real time, and I imagine that it will continue to play out long after us,” said Newman. “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.”
In the face of 2,600 federal and state lawsuits filed against the company for its role in the opioid epidemic, Purdue Pharma filed for bankruptcy in 2019. In September 2021, Painkiller was already in production when the news broke that Purdue Pharma was being dissolved and a federal judge had ordered the Sacklers to pay $4.5 billion in exchange for the family receiving legal protections. “There were some small adjustments made by the production to account for the developments, particularly relating to the bankruptcy,” said Gibney.
The case has gone back and forth in appeals, with a judge overturning the settlement in December 2021 because the former ruling released the Sacklers of liability in civil opioid-related cases. In May 2023, the Sacklers agreed to pay a potential $6 billion settlement in return for that “golden key” of protections for the family. It is believed the Sacklers are worth over $11 billion. As of Aug. 10, 2023 — the day of Painkiller’s release on Netflix — the Supreme Court agreed to consider the Justice Department’s challenge to the deal, putting the settlement on pause. The justices will hear arguments in the case in December, per the court’s order.
“I don’t think that the story of Purdue and the opioid crisis is finished… There is still so much that’s going to be unfolding over time,” said Fitzerman-Blue.
It is estimated that over 300,000 people have died over the past two decades from overdoses involving prescription opioids like OxyContin. In Painkiller, Taylor Kitsch’s fictional character Glen Kryger represents one of them. “These stories don’t get made enough,” Kitsch told Netflix. “So when they do, we gotta do it f--king right and take a swing.”
Painkiller is now streaming on Netflix.
Additional reporting by Keely Flaherty.
