Johnny Hickey

A one-time street kid from Boston, these days Johnny is a celebrated filmmaker, actor, and anti-drug crusader. Early on in his career, he was a field producer for Vanguard correspondent Mariana Van Zeller on "The Oxycontin Express," a Current TV special which took home a Peabody Award for its investigation of opiate subculture in Boston. Hickey knew that world extremely well, and has used it as a centerpiece in much of his work up to this point. Johnny's feature-length debut, the 2013 opioid tragedy Oxy Morons, had a successful two-month test screening at Showcase Cinemas in New England, where it placed second in the theater's box-office sales in its first week of showing against more than a dozen studio films. The movie subsequently had eighteen-month run on Netflix, getting more than 200,000 reviews, and is currently available on Amazon Prime and Xfinity On Demand. Following Oxy Morons, Johnny directed fight choreography for the 2018 MMA action film Blood Circus, which he also helped produce and featured in as an actor. Most recently Johnny has partnered with Sugar Studios in Los Angeles and has recently completed his second feature film, the subterranean rave psychological thriller "HABITUAL" which co-stars longtime (MTV 's The Challenge) favorite, Chris "CT" Tamburello. When he's not creating films for the big screen, Johnny also collaborates with the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism on his Film Intervening Getting High Team (F.I.G.H.T.) project, which produces video content about the opioid crisis with people in recovery as well as media makers whose friends and family members struggle with addiction.