In a $50 million-plus deal, Netflix has acquired the international rights to Emily Blunt’s Pain Hustlers, the first significant purchase of the 2022 Cannes Film Festival.
The project’s creator, David Yates, has been compared to The Big Short and Wolf of Wall Street. According to the trailer, Blunt will portray a high school dropout who obtains a job with a failed pharmaceutical start-up in a Central Florida strip mall. Liza‘s charisma, guts, and ambition propel the company and her into the spotlight, where she quickly finds herself at the center of a fatal criminal conspiracy.
The screenplay for the feature film was written by Wells Tower, and it is being produced by Lawrence Grey by his Grey Matter Productions, as well as Yates and Yvonne Walcott from their Wychwood Pictures. Pain Hustlers is set to begin in August.
Last month, Netflix released its first-quarter results report, revealing that the streaming service had lost 200,000 users in the first trimester and expected to drop another 2 million in the second. Netflix laid off 150 employees earlier this week, the majority of whom were headquartered in the United States.
In an otherwise lethargic Cannes, the sale is the most noteworthy. The previous year, at the festival. CAA Media Finance and The Veterans are representing the picture in Cannes.
