{"id":708122,"date":"2026-06-16T20:29:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T20:29:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/708122\/"},"modified":"2026-06-16T20:29:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T20:29:09","slug":"lakeith-stanfield-greg-kinnear-join-john-lee-hancocks-monsanto-drama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/708122\/","title":{"rendered":"Lakeith Stanfield, Greg Kinnear Join John Lee Hancock’s Monsanto Drama"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tJohn Lee Hancock<\/a>\u2018s legal drama about the landmark legal trial against U.S. chemical company Monsanto just added more star power. LaKeith Stanfield<\/a>, Julia McDermott, David Duchovny, Melonie Diaz, Bilal Hasna and Greg Kinnear<\/a> have signed on to join previously announced stars, Jonathan Bailey and Laura Dern. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe yet-to-be-titled film follows the true story of young, untried attorney Brent Wisner (Bailey), who in 2019 took on a seemingly insurmountable case against the giant U.S. chemical company Monsanto on behalf of Dewayne \u201cLee\u201d Johnson (Stanfield), who used the company\u2019s best-known product Roundup, a wildly financially successful weed and grass pesticide killer, as part of his job as a high school groundskeeper.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Johnson vs. Monsanto case was the first Roundup cancer lawsuit to proceed to trial and ended with a verdict determining that Roundup causes non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The jury awarded Johnson $289 million for failing to warn consumers that exposure to Roundup weed killer causes cancer. The verdict set a precedent that paved the way for thousands of subsequent lawsuits and jury verdicts against Monsanto\u2019s parent company, Bayer.<\/p>\n

\n\tHancock (\u201cThe Blind Side,\u201d \u201cSaving Mr. Banks\u201d) directs from a screenplay he wrote with Michael Wisner, Alexandra Duparc and Ned Benson. Moritz Borman, Eric Kopeloff, Philip Schulz-Deyle, Adam McKay, Kevin Messick and Jon Levin are producing the project. Netflix picked up the rights<\/a> to the project out of Cannes in 2024; CAA Media Finance brokered the deal on behalf of the filmmakers.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was drawn to this contemporary David vs. Goliath true story because I found it dramatic, moving, quite funny and of critical importance in today\u2019s world,\u201d Hancock said before the film\u2019s sale<\/a>. \u201cMy ambitions are to deliver a smart, thoughtful and commercial legal drama that takes the audience on a human journey.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIndeed, Hancock\u2019s film is timely, as the U.S. Supreme Court is currently deciding whether federal law preempts a state-level \u201cfailure-to-warn\u201d claim when the EPA has not mandated a cancer warning. In April, the court heard oral arguments from Monsanto asserting that they should be shielded from future \u201cfailure-to-warn\u201d claims, backed by the EPA\u2019s stance that Roundup is safe and doesn\u2019t require cancer warnings on the label. A ruling is expected this month. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tJulia McDermott and David Duchovny; Melonie Diaz and Bilal Hasna. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMcDermott: Thomas Brunot \/ Duchovny: Mark Mann \/ Diaz: Stephanie Girard \/ Hasna: Yellowbelly<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"John Lee Hancock\u2018s legal drama about the landmark legal trial against U.S. chemical company Monsanto just added more…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":708123,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[88,207281,305642,86511,206,217],"class_list":["post-708122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-greg-kinnear","tag-john-lee-hancock","tag-lakeith-stanfield","tag-movies","tag-netflix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=708122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708122\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/708123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=708122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=708122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=708122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}