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Director shares a shocking account of the George twins.

CNN honors Black History Month.

WATCH: ‘Nobody put more pills on the streets’: Former FBI agent 

Exclusive: Director shares the shocking moment when he met the subjects of his new documentary  

Directed by Emmy award-winner Darren Foster, the new true-crime documentary American Pain (premiering this Sunday at 9 p.m. ET on CNN) traces the rise and fall of Chris and Jeff George, identical twins who are believed to be America’s most prolific opioid kingpins.

In just a few years of operation, the Georges ran a pill mill empire that attracted clients from around the country and spawned a prescription drug trafficking network with an estimated street value of more than $500 million. 

Director Foster spent a decade covering the opioid crisis.

In 2017, he was awarded a duPont Award for Death by Fentanyl, an in-depth look at how a powerful painkiller turned into the worst drug epidemic in US history. It continued Darren's groundbreaking reporting on the opioid crisis with the 2009 doc, The OxyContin Express, which won a Peabody Award, a Television Academy Honor and an Emmy nomination.

Here's a behind-the-scenes look at what drew him to cover the story of the George brothers:

"As a journalist and filmmaker, I’m no stranger to chasing stories. But in the case of my latest film American Pain, the story quite literally chased me.

I first crossed paths with the main subjects, twin brothers Christopher and Jeffrey George, in 2009 when they chased me down I-95 in Florida after I attempted to film outside their pain clinic, American Pain. By that time, American Pain had earned a reputation among drug users and dealers from around the country as a liberal dispenser of oxycodone. But I had little idea that the brothers would turn out to be the kingpins behind the largest pill trafficking network in US history. That only came to light months after my initial encounter when their clinics were raided as part of a groundbreaking federal investigation that led to more than 30 people being charged under the RICO Act, including thirteen doctors, for dispensing a staggering number of pills across the US. 

The George brothers’ bust led to the toppling of Florida’s pill mill industry. I naively thought my coverage of the opioid crisis was over.

"Instead, over the next decade, I found myself returning to the story again and again as the epidemic surged and evolved, with users moving on to heroin and then fentanyl.

Throughout this reporting, I’ve told the story of countless families who have lost loved ones to overdoses and lost sources and friends of my own. I’ve reported the toll on first responders, schools, jails, and hospitals. I’ve seen whole communities devastated by opioids.

I kept returning to the George brothers and American Pain through it all. Their story seemed like a watershed moment in this historic drug crisis and a lens through which we can best understand how a prescription drug became a street-level scourge that would impact generations.

And so I contacted them in federal prison, and they agreed to talk.

In the film American Pain, the George brothers, their co-conspirators, rivals, and the law enforcement officials who brought them down tell the incredible story of how a couple of steroid-juiced felons pioneered an elaborate pain clinic scheme that kicked a nascent opioid epidemic into overdrive.

"The film also reveals how the George twins and Florida’s pill mill industry had plenty of help from a pharmaceutical industry that ignored glaring red flags. In 2009 and 2010, when the George brothers were at the peak of their operation, five of the nation’s top 20 opioid prescribers worked at just one of their clinics, and 90% of all the nation’s oxycodone was being prescribed in the state.

"'Before this case, the public only knew that people were dying from drug overdoses, they had no idea how the system worked,' says FBI Special Agent Kurt Mckenzie. '[The George brothers] created the blueprint.'

In addition to dozens of interviews, I employed every trick I’d learned as an investigative reporter: scrubbing public records and court filings, filing freedom of information requests and knocking on doors from Fort Lauderdale to Appalachia."

"The result is hundreds of hours of wiretap recordings, undercover videos and tens of thousands of pages of documents that help flesh out how the George twins realized their vision of turning doctors into assembly-line workers stamping prescription after prescription.

What makes the opioid crisis different than previous drug epidemics is not only the scale of devastation, but the fact that it was made in America. The drug suppliers that spawned the crisis weren’t some foreign drug cartel, but rather a corrupt pharmaceutical industry pumping out billions of highly addictive oxycodone pills.

No story illustrates this better than American Pain, where a remarkable cast of hustlers and felons partnered with doctors and pharmaceutical suppliers to create the greatest drug racket to hit South Florida since the cocaine cowboys in the 1980s."

Don't miss the premiere this Sunday at 9 p.m. ET/PT on CNN. The film will also be available on CNNgo beginning Monday, February 6. 

Celebrating Black History Month with CNN Films & Original Series

In honor of Black History Month, our Keep Watching team has curated a weekly highlight of our favorite CNN Films and Original Series that showcase Black voices and perspectives.

First up on the list is United Shades of America with W. Kamau Bell.

The series follows the comedian and political provocateur as he explores communities across America, diving into some of the most polarizing yet thought-provoking subjects. 

In an episode from last season titled "The Woke War," he jumps feet-first into a fight brewing in Arizona on the frontlines of academia. Visiting Maricopa County, he explores a school board's battle over critical race theory (CRT) that would ultimately impact how American history is taught in schools. The school board drama drives W. Kamau Bell to meet and talk with Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw—the originator of the phrase— and people on all sides of the political spectrum to explore the roots of "wokeness," how it's related to critical race theory, and why these issues are important to Americans. 

This topic continues to make it in the headlines. This week, the College Board released the new framework for an Advanced Placement course on African American Studies.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who banned the teaching of critical race theory in the state, had previously denounced the course. According to scholars who study it, critical race theory explores how a history of inequality and racism in the United States continues to impact American society today.

If you haven't seen the series, you can watch it on Discovery+ and CNNgo.

This edition was written and edited by Janelle Davis and Alexis Garfield.