Netflix film starring Chris Evans, Emily Blunt shot car chase in Tampa Bay

TAMPA — Neither of the Tampa Bay area’s film commissioners would say whether stars Chris Evans or Emily Blunt acted in the “Pain Hustlers” car chase scenes shot here over the course of a few days in October.

But the area will likely have a presence on screen when the Netflix movie is released sometime in 2023.

“Thanks to the participation of multiple jurisdictions and offices, ‘Pain Hustlers’ was able to film a complex series of driving shots in our community,” said Tyler Martinolich, head of Hillsborough’s commission, Film Tampa Bay. “Be on the lookout for Bayshore Boulevard, the Selmon Expressway, parts of downtown Tampa, and the Gandy and Skyway bridges.”

Also featuring Catherine O’Hara and Andy Garcia, according to IMDB.com, “Pain Hustlers” is about a woman with dreams of a better life for her and her daughter. She gets a job at a bankrupt pharmacy and catapults “the company and her into the high life not knowing that she will soon be in the middle of a criminal conspiracy.”

The movie is based on Evan Hughes’ New York Times Magazine article of the same name and the follow-up book, “The Hard Sell.” Both, according to Amazon, are inside looks at a “band of entrepreneurial upstarts who made millions selling painkillers — until their scheme unraveled, putting them at the center of a landmark criminal trial.”

Martinolich said the production spent around $100,000 in Hillsborough.

St. Petersburg-Clearwater film commissioner Tony Armer said the same was spent in Pinellas.