This week we get our first look at Your Lucky Day, an action thriller starring Euphoria’s Angus Cloud, whose death on July 31 was eventually ruled an accidental drug overdose. Your Lucky Day, the feature debut of writer-director Dan Brown, is Cloud’s first big-screen lead role, as a guy who steals a winning lottery ticket but commits a murder in the process.
The trailer, set to a classic slowed-down dramatic cover song— this time, it’s a children’s choir singing “America the Beautiful”– isn’t shy about sharing plot details: Cloud’s character sees a guy buy a winning lottery ticket, quickly makes a mask out of a nudie mag—ending up with the word “cum” prominently featured on his face—and robs him at gunpoint. Things go awry when a do-gooding security guard pops out of the bathroom with a gun of his own. Cloud’s character makes a fateful decision and then has to figure out what to do next.
“Nobody ever got rich without doin’ no crimes,” Cloud says, in his signature, laconic-verging-on-pained delivery.
Your Lucky Day premiered to mostly rave reviews at Fantastic Fest a few weeks ago, and it looks to be a classic single-location thriller with some fairly broad themes. In giving us so many of the plot specifics right up front, it seems like the strategy is to play up the pathos, and the eerie coincidence of its 25-year-old star playing a character who takes a big swing at a better life but in the process does something possibly self-destructive.
A former classmate of Zendaya’s at Oakland School for the Arts, Cloud was discovered by Euphoria’s casting director while out walking in Manhattan. He went on to star in a handful of music videos and had a small role in the stylish but little-seen indie skateboard flick North Hollywood.
On Euphoria, his character— the volatile but sweet-natured drug dealer Fezco— became a fan favorite. Fezco was initially meant to die in a bloody shootout with police at the end of the show’s second-season finale; in an interview after Cloud’s death, Euphoria creator Sam Levinson revealed that he decided to change the script and spare Fezco out of concern for Cloud’s well-being.
“He loved the crew. He loved the actors. He loved everything about it. And I just thought, if this goes away, I don’t know what’s going to happen in his life,” Levinson told People. “We got to keep him around. He’s too special. It doesn’t matter what the fucking story is.”
Beyond Your Lucky Day, Cloud had shot roles in Freaky Tales, an Oakland-set drama from the Half Nelson filmmaking team of Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck; The Line, a fraternity thriller still to be released, and a Universal Monsters film, title TBD. Of the films, Your Lucky Day seems to feature Cloud in his most substantial role.
The Alameda County coroner’s office eventually ruled that Angus Cloud’s death was the result of an accidental overdose of cocaine, methamphetamine, fentanyl and benzodiazepines. Friends and family said Cloud had been grieving his father at the time, whose funeral he’d attended just a week earlier in Ireland.
Your Lucky Day hits theaters November 10, with a digital release to follow on November 14.