The Irish documentary film “Knuckle”, shown at the Sundance Film Festival, has been bought by Rough House Pictures and will be remade for HBO.
The movie follows the story of a dispute between two Irish Traveler families, mainly two brothers named James Quinn and Michael McDonagh, and how they taunt each other through verbal abuse and videos into having fights.
After the fight the victor has the pride and bragging rights. Although it’s not clear how the fight started it’s thought that a woman is involved. Essentially it’s a the story of a family dispute and how it is settled though bare-knuckle fights.
Since the movie was first viewed at Sundance Film Festival last week it has received a lot of interest from buyers and distributors. Gerard Butler, Vin Diesel and Robert Downey Jr have all shown interest in the documentary but Rough House’s Matt Reilly has officially won the rights.
The movie took Rise Films’ Teddy Leifer and Ian Palmer 12 years to make.
During the festival Palmer was asked does he see the vicious cycle in this family ever coming to an end.
He said “This feuding among family members has gone on for generations, passed on from fathers, from grandfathers, from great-grandfathers…There is no resolution. It doesn’t work out like that. Each one picks it up and takes it on.”
The documentary will now serve as a ripe pilot for a drama series. Rough House will produce the drama which will eventually air on HBO.
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