According to The Hollywood Reporter, Narcos boss Eric Newman is teaming up with Netflix again for Painkiller, an eight-episode drama series about the opioid crisis. The show is based on Patrick Radden Keefe’s New Yorker piece “The Family That Built An Empire Of Pain” and Barry Meier’s book Pain Killer: An Empire Of Deceit And The Origin Of America’s Opioid Epidemic (splitting “painkiller” into two words makes for a much better title, for the record), with Peter Berg from Friday Night Lights and Alex Gibney of the Going Clear Scientology documentary are on board as executive producers. Berg will also direct, which seems like a good sign that Mark Wahlberg might star in this. Everybody needs a high-profile Netflix series under their belt at some time, right?
In a notably direct nod to his other Netflix show, Newman said in a statement that the opioid problem in America is “unlike other drug epidemics” that are “born from underground manufacturing and covert smuggling” because it “began by prescription.”