The film explores the origins, extent, and fallout of one of the most devastating public health tragedies of our time.
HBO's THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY, a two-part documentary directed by Emmy® and Academy Award® winner Alex Gibney (HBO's "The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley," "Going Clear: Scientology & the Prison of Belief"), and presented in association with The Washington Post, is a searing indictment of Big Pharma and the political operatives and government regulations that enabled over-production, RECKLESS distribution and abuse of synthetic opiates. Debuting MONDAY, MAY 10 (9:00-10:50 p.m. ET/PT), with Part Two airing the following evening, the film explores the origins, extent, and fallout of one of the most devastating public health tragedies of our time, with half a million deaths from overdoses this century alone, revealing that America's opioid epidemic is not a public health crisis that came out of nowhere.
THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY will debut on HBO and will be available to stream on HBO Max. With the help of whistleblowers, insiders, newly-leaked documents, exclusive interviews and behind-the-scenes access to investigations, and featuring expert input from medical professionals, journalists, former and current government agents, attorneys and pharmaceutical sales representatives, as well as sobering testimony from victims of opioid addiction, Gibney's exposé posits that drug companies are in fact largely responsible for manufacturing the very crisis they profit from, to the tune of billions of dollars... and hundreds of thousands of lives. The opioid crisis has resulted in a country ravaged by corporate greed and betrayed by some of its own elected officials, following the aggressive promotion of OxyContin, a highly addictive drug from family-owned pharmaceutical giant Purdue Pharma. Part One of the documentary focuses on how Purdue worked closely with the FDA to get the highly profitable pain medication approved for wider use, promoting its safety without sufficient evidence, and creating a campaign to redefine pain and how we treat it. When government regulators or Justice Department officials tried to mitigate the wrongdoing, Purdue Pharma and huge opioid distributors like Cardinal-Health would settle the cases, keeping the details private and continuing on unabated. As tens of thousands of people succumbed to opioid addiction, the fortunes built by the opiate business became the crime of the century, and the market that OxyContin had opened paved the way for even deadlier prescription drugs.Watch the trailer here:
Videos