The Young Turks Launches TYT Productions With Debut Docu ‘The Oxy Kingpins’
EXCLUSIVE: The Young Turks has launched a new venture, TYT Productions, a film and television company that will develop and produce original non-fiction projects that examine stories of national importance that would be better served through long-form storytelling.
“The launch of our film and television arm, TYT Productions, will continue to amplify the important stories that match our mission to boldly pursue truth, challenge the establishment, and drive positive change,” said Cenk Uygur, Founder and CEO TYT, an online news outlet that produces a variety of programs, including its flagship talk show, The Young Turks.
“We pride ourselves in sharing unfiltered commentary in our daily news coverage and we’re going to continue to deliver the same authentic and honest perspective through TYT Productions.”
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The first project under the new label is The Oxy Kingpins, a documentary that is set to premiere at the upcoming 2021 SXSW Film Festival during SXSW Online. Directed by Emmy nominee Brendan FitzGerald and Oscar nominee Nick August-Perna, the docu counts Oscar-winning filmmaker Adam McKay as an executive producer along with Maeve Cullinane and Todd Schulman and TYT’s Chris Smith.
Drea Bernardi at TYT produced the pic, which tells the untold story of the web between pharmaceutical manufacturers, distributors, street criminals and retailers as they conspired to facilitate this drug-fueled crisis responsible for the deaths of half-a-million Americans. It exposes the unseen middle layer of the distribution pyramid consisting of the distributors who shipped pills to pharmacies, hospitals, and pain management clinics across the country.
“Brendan FitzGerald and Nick August-Perna’s captivating film tells the unbelievable story of how Big Pharma started legally selling heroin to the American people. It’s a staggering and unbelievable tragedy that when all is said and done, looks and feels like just what it is: a seedy drug deal gone wrong”, said McKay.
Uygur also served as an EP along with TYT CBO Steve Oh, XRM Media’s Michael Y. Chow, Sue Turley, and Bonnie Buckner, in addition to Second Nature’s Hayley Pappas and Matt Ippolito.
The next project in TYT Productions pipeline is a film from director Zefrey Throwell (Flames) and it looks at the battle between progressive and establishment Democrats in America.
“We are beyond excited to launch TYT Productions with our first feature documentary, The Oxy Kingpins,” said Bernardi, EVP of TYT Productions. “TYT has long been covering the daily news cycle from a progressive perspective, and now we are bringing that same ethos to documentary films, where we dive deeper and bring more color and context to the complex issues that impact our world in so many profound ways.”
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