Replay: Writer Danny Strong on his quest to make Hulu’s ‘Dopesick’

The Business

KCRW

Tv & Film

4.6 • 676 Ratings

🗓️ 26 August 2022

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, The Business revisits a conversation with Danny Strong, writer, producer, and creator of “Dopesick,” which has 14 Emmy nominations for the portrayal of the evils of Purdue Pharma. Before co-creating the hit show “Empire,” Strong won accolades for writing two HBO movies based on real events: “Recount” and “Game Change,” as well as “Lee Daniels’ The Butler.” So when he decided to make a series about the opioid epidemic based on Beth Macy’s book “Dopesick,” he thought he’d be met with open arms. “I was going around to these pitches like, ‘I’m coming back to my nonfiction roots, like ‘Recount’ and ‘Game Change,’ and I’ve got a bestselling book,” he recalls. But the reaction he got was, “No one cares. ‘Oh, ‘Recount?’ Cute. That was 14 years ago’... if no one cares who you are, or what you've done… or if they don't want the project, they're not going to engage. It's not it's not an easy business. It's a tough racket.” Hollywood can be cold, but “Dopesick” eventually found a home on Hulu. Strong tells Kim Masters about falling down the Sackler family rabbit hole while researching Purdue Pharma and its deadly drug, OxyContin, and the many challenges he faced to get the show made. First, KCRW has fresh banter with guest-hosts Matt Belloni and Lucas Shaw about how two major theater chain operators AMC and Regal have recently made desperate financial moves to stay afloat.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From KCRW, I'm Kim Masters, and this is The Business.
0:05.0	Today, we revisit our conversation with dopesic creator Danny Strong,
0:08.9	whose series about the evils of Purdue Pharma has no fewer than 14 Emmy nominations.
0:14.4	Before he created the hit show Empire, Strong had won accolades for two HBO movies based on real events.
0:20.8	So when he wanted to make a series about the opioid epidemic, he thought he'd be met with
0:24.8	open arms.
0:25.8	I was going around these pitches, like, I'm coming back to my nonfiction roots, like recount
0:30.9	and game change, and I've got a best-selling book, and no one cares.
0:35.3	You know, no one goes, oh, recount,ew. 14 years ago, you know, yeah.
0:41.1	Hollywood is so cold, but doapsick eventually found a home on Hulu. Strong tells us about
0:46.5	falling down the Sackler family rabbit hole while researching the deadly drug, Oxycontin.
0:51.7	But first, two buddies banter while I'm out of town. Stick around. It's the business
0:56.1	from KCRW. I'm Matt Bellany, founding partner of Puck. I'm in for the vacationing Kim Masters
1:02.7	here with Lucas Shaw of Bloomberg. Hi there, Lucas. Hey, Matt. All right, so we got to make some sense
1:08.4	of what's going on in the movie theater world.
1:11.2	We saw a lot of activity over the past week.
1:13.5	AMC, the world's largest theater owner, they issued a bunch of new stock on Monday.
1:19.2	And there's a lot of financial shenanigans going on behind the scenes.
1:22.4	But basically, this was an attempt to raise more money and fend off a very challenging time in the movie industry.
1:31.0	This is a, some are calling it a movie desert because there are basically no big releases between early August and mid-October.
1:41.6	And that's really difficult for these theaters.
1:45.0	We saw the second largest theater owner,
	...

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