The studios’ marketing machines usually position their important films in carefully calibrated rollouts in the fall for consideration for a variety of awards, ending with the coveted Oscar as a hopeful win.

Focus Features’ taunt thriller “Kill the Messenger” is such a film and stars two-time Academy Award nominee Jeremy Renner (“The Bourne Legacy”), who is also a producer under his newly formed production company the Combine, which he started with partner Don Handfield.

The aim of the new production shingle is to create, develop and produce high-quality, character-driven content for mainstream audiences. The film is directed by Michael Cuesta. The screenplay was written by Peter Landesman and is based on the books “Dark Alliance” by Gary Webb and “Kill the Messenger” by Nick Schou.

“Kill the Messenger” is based on the remarkable, true story of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Webb, who stumbles onto a story that leads to the shady origins of the men who started the crack epidemic on the nation’s streets.

During his thorough research, he further alleges that the CIA was aware of major dealers who were smuggling cocaine into the U.S. and using the profits to arm rebels fighting in Nicaragua.

Despite venomous warnings from drug kingpins and seedy CIA operatives to stop his investigation, Webb kept obsessively digging to uncover a conspiracy with explosive implications. His journey took him from the prisons of California to the villages of Nicaragua to the highest corridors of power in Washington, D.C., drawing the kind of attention that threatened not just his career, but his family and his life.

In New York, the crack epidemic hit the African-American and Hispanic communities like a ravenous, rabid dog, and its effects still linger in pockets. Today, the devalued property prices that occurred because of the sale and use of drugs, particularly crack cocaine, have changed the face of the property owners and renters.

The sobering truth was placed on my plate when a 38-year-old Harlem resident commented on the fast-changing faces of the neighborhood and how, in the 1980s, she would “walk over crack vials.”

“No one wanted to live here then,” she continued as we strolled by three new bars not owned by people of color. “They want ‘us’ out of these buildings so they can raise the rents. Crack made that possible. You don’t have to be an economist to understand that.”

Crack was more than whack—it cleaned out families like a famine. Think about it. That’s one of many observations you begin to ponder when you connect the dots in this film.

I had the opportunity to connect with Jeremy Renner. Here’s just a bit about what he had to say about the price of telling the truth.

AmNews: Why did you want to make this movie, really?

Renner: Gary Webb is a hero, and his story is very powerful. He was driven to tell the truth. That’s all. The truth.

As a producer, what drove you? Or was it the same as what you liked as an actor?

Gary, remember, was a real person, and that journey was emotional, exciting and relevant for us today, given how impacted we are by surveillance and social media.

The facts surrounding drugs—how they get into the county and who truly benefits from the misery—it’s a business that isn’t new to people of color anywhere! So why is this story really important to re-tell?

Accountability in government and from our leaders only comes when an ethical, free press is engaged and energized.

Gary Webb lost his job, his family and was found with “two gunshot wounds” in 2004. He was 49 and his death occurred seven years to the day that he resigned from the Mercury News. It’s ruled a suicide. Two shots in the head. Thoughts?

Gary did the right thing at a great personal and professional cost, and his plight moved me, and bringing it back to your first question, that’s why I produced this film, of which I’m very proud.

“Kill The Messenger” opens Oct. 10.