Re-Uniting director Laura Adkin and producer Krista Rand are reteaming for Out of Luck, a female-driven heist movie based on a first screenplay by best-selling thriller author Catherine McKenzie.
The feature will center on a group of defiant women determined to make their own luck on St. Patrick’s Day as they plot revenge on the man who wronged them by pulling off a suspenseful heist of his Irish bars, according to a synopsis from the filmmakers. Vancouver producer Flat/Head Films nabbed the rights to McKenzie’s original script to be helmed by Adkin in Budapest as a co-production with Hungary’s Scripted Productions.
“When Catherine came to me with this idea, I jumped at the opportunity to work with her on it. Out of Luck is a high-stakes, suspenseful, female-driven heist movie with a unique Canadian flair,” Adkin said in a statement. Her feature debut Re:Uniting, which Adkin wrote and directed and starred Jesse L. Martin and Michelle Harrison, premiered at the Austin Film Festival in 2023 and had a theatrical release a year later.
McKenzie has written 20 suspense, thriller and rom-com novels like I’ll Never Tell and The Good Liar, and is also known for the bestselling Vacation Mysteries titles penned under the pseudonym Catherine Mack. Paramount Television Studios earlier optioned McKenzie’s thrillers I’ll Never Tell and You Can’t Catch Me for development into TV series.
The Out of Luck feature film reteams Adkin with Re-Uniting producer Krista Rand and longtime cinematographer Stirling Bancroft (Freaks, Final Destination Bloodlines). Adkin and Rand will be in Cannes to secure additional financing and partners for the feature just after McKenzie has the next book in her Vacation Mysteries series released on April 28, 2026.
“I am thrilled to be partnering with Laura and Krista on this film. With Out of Luck, I’m looking to bring the same sensibility that has made me a long-standing success as a novelist to Canadian filmmaking. The development of the Canadian commercial book market demonstrates to me that the Canadian public is hungry for home-grown commercial film projects, especially given the current political climate,” McKenzie said in a statement.
