An adaptation of the Tracy Letts play, Killer Joe is the first release by LD Entertainment after Mickey Liddell formed the distribution company late last year and hired veteran indie executive David Dinerstein to run it. It’s not the first time Friedkin turned in a cut of a film that drew a dreaded rating from the MPAA. While Friedkin tackled rough subject matter in films like The Exorcist and To Live And Die In L.A., he got an X-rating for the 1980 film Cruising, in which Al Pacino played a detective who goes undercover looking for a killer preying on gay men. Friedkin said he had to cut 40 minutes of that movie to get an R rating. But he won’t have to cut a frame of Killer Joe. LD Entertainment-released trailer for the film will wear the NC-17 (No One 17 And Under Admitted) rating like a red badge of courage, Deadline reported.

It is a somewhat surprising development considering the pedigree of Friedkin and Letts, the latter of whom won both the Pulitzer and Tony for August: Osage County. Killer Joe is a garish, sexy black comedy that stars Matthew McConaughey, Emile Hirsch, Juno Temple, Gina Gershon and Thomas Haden Church. It is provocative, but played strongly in Venice, Toronto (where it was acquired by LD Entertainment) and SXSW.

This will be the first significant film released with NC-17 since the Steve McQueen-directed Shame. Fox Searchlight co-presidents Nancy Utley and Steve Gilula acquired that film at Toronto last year, right after viewing it in Telluride. The deal stipulated that not a frame of the film would be cut, and it was clear all along that the film would be NC-17. The feeling was that McQueen’s direction, and the performances of Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan, made Shame Oscar bait. Despite glowing reviews, Shame was shut out of the nominations by Oscar voters, and Utley and Gilula wondered if voters ever even bothered to watch the film because of its rating. In the U.S., Shame grossed just $3.9 million of its $17.7 million worldwide total.