When setting up a production company, most filmmakers hope that the first feature out of the gate at least makes a little bit of noise.
Thankfully for Dublin-based Wildcard, “Kneecap” didn’t do anything quietly.
Rich Peppiatt’s rowdy, raucous, drug-soaked and politically-charged directorial debut, a comedy almost-biopic about the Northern Irish rap group of the same name, became the standout hit of Sundance 2024, where it was snapped up by Sony Pictures Classics. Starring the bandmates as versions of themselves and with Michael Fassbender supporting, the film would go on to make the Oscar’s International Feature shortlist, dominate the British Independent Film Awards and even win a BAFTA.
Not exactly a bad start.
Wildcard had hits before, but with other people’s films. Launching in 2013 as Wildcard Distribution, it released features across Ireland such as “The Young Offenders,” the comedy that spawned the hit TV series, Lance Daly’s Berlinale-bowing period drama “Black ’47” (starring a young Barry Keoghan and taking on the 19th century Irish Famine) and “Wolfwalkers,” the Oscar-nominated animation from Kilkenny’s pioneering studio Cartoon Saloon.
