Deadline is reporting that Northern Irish director Chris Baugh’s debut feature, Bad Day for the Cut, has been acquired for North American release by Well Go USA Entertainment.
Donal, a middle-aged Irish farmer still lives at home his mother, content with a simple life. However, when she is savagely murdered Donal sets off for Belfast looking for answers – and revenge. What he finds is a world of violence and brutality that he can’t understand and a secret about his family that will shake him to his core.
Bad Day for the Cut stars Nigel O’Neill (The Secret, Game of Thrones) as Donal, alongside Susan Lynch (Happy Valley, Monroe), Stuart Graham (The Frankenstein Chronicles, The Secret) and rising stars Jozef Pawlowski (Jack Strong), and Anna Pro’chniak (Warsaw 44).
The screenplay, written by Baugh and Brendan Mullin, was developed through Northern Ireland Screen’s New Talent Focus scheme with Lottery funding from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. Mullin produces alongside Katy Jackson (A Patch of Fog, The Survivalist).
Baugh and Mullin’s first production for their company, short horror Boys from County Hell, picked up Best Irish Short at the Kerry International Film Festival 2012. In 2013 they produced Stumpy’s Brae, a 1x 30 mins horror drama for BBC Northern Ireland. Most recently they made short kidnap thriller The Captors, selected as part of the Northern Ireland Screen and BFI Shorts to Features Programme and Dinosaurs, a 20-minute web drama pilot produced as part of RTE’s Storyland initiative.
The production team on Bad Day for the Cut also includes Ryan Kernaghan (Stumpy’s Brae, Boys from County Hell) as Director of Photography, John Leslie (The Survivalist, Behold the Lamb) as Production Designer, Brian Philip Davis (Dinosaurs, Stumpy’s Brae) as Editor, and Lisa Lavery (A Christmas Star) as Costume Designer.
Bad Day for the Cut has its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year.
Bad Day for the Cut is an amazing achievement – it puts a spin on the revenge thriller that’s just so incredibly fresh. One review referenced both the Dardenne brothers and Jeremy Saulnier in the same sentence, and that sums up quite perfectly what Chris has accomplished here.
Dylan Marchetti, SVP Acquisitions – Well Go USA