From Screen Daily

By Jeremy Kay

Sierra/Affinity has acquired international sales rights to Rumble Films and Backup Media’s drama Donnybrook to star Frank Grillo and Jamie Bell.

Nick Meyer plans a full sales launch in 2018 on the noir adaptation, styled as a backwoods version of Fight Club meets No Country For Old Men about a down-at-heel family man who enters a bare-knuckle brawl with a $100,000 purse. Margaret Qualley and James Badge Dale also star.

Rumble Films chief David Lancaster reunites with Meyer after they worked together on Drive, Nightcrawler and Whiplash while Lancaster was at Bold Films.

Principal photography is currently underway in Cincinnati on the project, which is fully financed by Paris-based Backup Media. UTA Independent Film Group represents US rights.

Writer-director Tim Sutton (Dark Night, Memphis) adapted the screenplay from Frank Bill’s 2013 novel of the same name. Lancaster produces with Stephanie Wilcox of Rumble Films, and Backup Media.

“We are delighted to be working with David again,” Sierra/Affinity CEO Meyer said. “Donnybrook is right in his producing wheelhouse of delivering high quality elevated genre films and we can’t wait to bring Tim’s vision of this muscular and gritty world to a global audience.”