Actor Jonathan Bailey has wrapped filming on a new untitled Netflix film about the legal battle over Monsanto Roundup herbicide.
The movie, scheduled to premiere in 2027, stars the Bridgerton actor as Brent Wisner, a young lawyer who represented a high school groundskeeper in a landmark 2018 cancer trial.
Directed by John Lee Hancock, the real-life legal drama features an ensemble cast including Laura Dern, LaKeith Stanfield, David Duchovny, Greg Kinnear and Elizabeth McGovern.
Hancock, known for directing the Oscar-nominated biographical drama The Blind Side and the Disney backstory film Saving Mr. Banks, also co-wrote the screenplay alongside Michael Wisner, Alexandra Duparc and Ned Benson.
The groundskeeper cancer trial
The film centers on the story of Dewayne "Lee" Johnson, a high school maintenance worker who used the weedkiller for years before developing non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Wisner took on Johnson's case against agrochemical giant Monsanto, leading to a high-stakes trial in 2018 that set the precedent for thousands of subsequent claims across the United States.
The California jury in the 2018 trial found that exposure to Roundup contributed to Johnson's cancer, awarding him $289 million in damages.
That initial payout was later reduced in subsequent judicial rulings, though the case established a major legal breakthrough for individuals claiming illness from glyphosate.
Conflicting scientific findings
Roundup, long marketed as a household and agricultural weedkiller by Monsanto, relies on the active chemical ingredient glyphosate to kill broadleaf weeds and grasses.
The health risks associated with glyphosate remain a point of intense conflict between international health authorities and corporate manufacturers.
In 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a specialized branch of the World Health Organization, classified glyphosate as probably carcinogenic to humans.
By contrast, the United States Environmental Protection Agency has maintained that glyphosate is not likely to cause cancer when consumers use the product according to label instructions.
Supreme Court ruling on Monsanto
Monsanto, which was acquired by German pharmaceutical and chemical group Bayer, has consistently denied that Roundup causes cancer.
The legal battle reached the highest court in the United States last June, when the Supreme Court ruled 7 to 2 in favor of the company in the case Monsanto v. Durnell.
Justices decided that federal pesticide regulation prevents plaintiffs from filing certain state-level lawsuits based on the absence of cancer warning labels on Roundup products.
Hancock's upcoming feature film focuses on the initial court battle that brought Wisner and Johnson to national prominence, detailing the legal fight that redefined corporate liability in America.
