Wildcard Distribution has acquired the Irish distribution rights of Lee Cronin’s horror film The Hole in the Ground. Principal photography has finished and the film will hit cinemas across the country in 2018. Wildcard has released a first-look image from the film to give audiences a taste for what’s in store.
Rising star Seána Kerslake plays a young single mother who is trapped between rationality and the unexplained as she becomes convinced her little boy has been transformed by something sinister from the depths of a mysterious sinkhole. Cronin co-wrote the script with Stephen Shields (The Republic of Telly). The film also features James Quinn Markey (Vikings), James Cosmo (T2 Trainspotting), Simone Kirby (Jimmy’s Hall), Steve Wall (An Klondike) and Kati Outinen (Le Havre).
Writer/director Cronin is best known for his multi-award-winning short Ghost Train, which won the Melies D’Argent Award for Best Fantastic Short Film in 2015. He is reunited on this project with DoP Tom Comerford, as well as with producers John Keville and Conor Barry of Savage Productions. Conor Dennison (A Dark Song) is production designer and Colin Campbell (The Young Offenders) is the editor.
I’m delighted that cinema audiences across Ireland will get to see The Hole in the Ground next year. It was our aim to capture a really tense and atmospheric story and we hope that people enjoy and respond to it as much as we enjoyed making it.
Lee Cronin, Director
We’re thrilled to have acquired Irish distribution rights for The Hole in the Ground. Lee Cronin is a visionary young director, and is making a truly great Irish horror film, with a career best performance from Seána Kerslake, and a star making turn from James Quinn Markey. We can’t wait for The Hole in the Ground to scare the bejaysus out of Irish audiences next year.
Patrick O’Neill, Managing Director of Wildcard Distribution
In addition to Savage Productions, The Hole in the Ground is co-produced by Benoit Roland of Wrong Men in Belgium and Ulla Simonen of MADE in Finland. It is funded by Irish Film Board / Bord Scannán na hÉireann, the BAI and Headgear Films with support coming from Wallimages and the Finnish Film Foundation. Hilary Davis and Stephen Kelliher executive produce for Bankside Films who are selling the film at the American Film Market next week.
Trying to escape her broken past, Sarah O’Neill is building a new life on the fringes of a backwood rural town with her young son Chris. A terrifying encounter with a mysterious neighbour shatters her fragile security, throwing Sarah into a spiralling nightmare of paranoia and mistrust, as she tries to uncover if the disturbing changes in her little boy are connected to an ominous sinkhole buried deep in the forest that borders their home.