For a few years now, Jeremy Renner has carved a niche for himself as a big-budget everyman. Whether he is a character in a billion dollar superhero franchise or the leading man in the hot new Taylor Sheridan project, Renner brings a kind of everyday stardom to the roles that he tackles. So when crafting a story about one of the greatest white collar crimes of our generation, who better to play the journalist who brings the whole thing down than our prevailing blue collar hero?
Paramount+ Renews ‘Mayor Of Kingstown’ With Jeremy Renner For Season 2
According to the press release, this new project has Renner taking on the role of David Armstrong, the award-winning journalist whose damning investigations into the Sackler family helped shine on a light on an American OxyContin crisis. The untitled film will be directed by the husband-wife team of Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly, whos previous features include “Beneath The Harvest Sky” and “Queenpins.” “The real David Armstrong is a man of utmost integrity,” the duo stated in a press release for the film. “We could not be more thrilled to have Jeremy on board to infuse that same integrity into his portrayal of David. We’re excited to work with such a great team to bring this story to a global audience.”
As is so often the case with award-winning journalism, Renner and company will not be the first to explore the relationship between the Sackler family and the opioid crisis. In 2020, Netflix announced “Painkiller,” a limited series from Peter Berg based on the award-winning writing of Patrick Radden Keefe and Barry Meier (whose book, “Pain Killer: An Empire of Deceit and the Origin of America’s Opioid Epidemic,” seems to have lent itself to the title of the show). The cast for that series currently includes Taylor Kitsch, Uzo Aduba, and Matthew Broderick.
And here, have a trailer for “Mayor of Kingstown” as both a thematic link between the actor’s two high-profile projects and a personal reminder that I really need to check that one out.