The Antivenom Interviews will be a sequel to The Venom Interviews (2016).
Now in early pre-production, The Antivenom Interviews (target release 2028) will be a feature documentary about one of the world’s oldest medical problems, and one of its most neglected. Snakebite has shaped the history of toxicology, immunology, emergency medicine, and public health for more than a century. Yet despite early breakthroughs by figures such as Louis Pasteur, Albert Calmette, and Vital Brazil, snakebite remains a daily mass-casualty problem for rural communities across much of the world. Millions are bitten each year, and an estimated 140,000 or more are killed. Several times this number survive only to face disability, disfigurement, lost livelihoods, or the collapse of a family’s economic stability. The burden falls most heavily on people with the least access to care.
The film aims to explain why the crisis persists and why this moment may represent the most important turning point in snakebite treatment in generations. It will trace the history of antivenom from its origins in the earliest age of serum therapy to the present-day realities of envenomation medicine: the biology of venom, the diversity of toxins, the regional differences in dangerous species, the clinical syndromes they produce, and the difficult treatment decisions faced by doctors, nurses, field providers, veterinarians, and health systems.
At its core, The Antivenom Interviews is about the gap between scientific knowledge and real-world outcomes. In some parts of the world, highly venomous snakes coexist with strong systems of care and relatively low mortality. In others, envenomation from even less potentially dangerous snakes leads to devastating loss of life. The Antivenom Interviews will examine the factors that determine whether a bite becomes a survivable medical emergency or a catastrophe: geography, poverty, transport, training, supply chains, antivenom availability, and the wider structure of healthcare itself.
The documentary also aims to capture a field in transition through the eyes of companies, NGOs and individuals who have made solving snakebite their mission. For decades, treatment has depended overwhelmingly on antivenoms built on methods that would be recognizable to scientists from a century ago. That is finally beginning to change. New antibody technologies, toxin-targeted small molecules, broad-spectrum inhibitors such as varespladib and marimastat, evolving clinical trial designs, and new ideas about early intervention may be opening the door to a radically different therapeutic future. The film will document both the promise and the uncertainty of this moment, asking what better treatment could look like, who it may reach first, and what obstacles still stand in the way.
The Antivenom Interviews aims to do three things: tell the history of snakebite treatment, explain the science of venom and envenomation clearly and rigorously, and make the human and public-health stakes impossible to ignore. Through interviews with clinicians, researchers, toxinologists, manufacturers, historians, veterinarians, public health experts, and people directly affected by snakebite, the film seeks to build a global portrait of a crisis that has long remained in the shadows, and of a scientific and medical effort that may finally be poised to change its future.
Development
The project is in early pre-production, with remaining principal photography planned for 2027 and post-production and release in late 2028. Substantial filming was completed in 2016 and 2017 in Mexico, Ghana, Togo, and Benin.
The project is seeking investment to complete production and post-production. The budget is estimated at US$80-90k.