EXCLUSIVE: UK sales firm The Mise En Scene Company launches this week ahead of the virtual AFM with a slate including thriller What Lies Ahead starring Rumer Willis, Emma Dumont, Kelly Blatz and Katie Keene.

Based in London, the company will represent between 5 – 20 new low to mid-budget ($3-10M) films per year and will look to work on highbrow and mass appeal projects from known filmmakers and fresh voices. Co-founders are Netto Fernandes and Paul S.L. Yates (pictured below left and right, respectively).

Yates was formerly a communications exec in Scotland, then moved on to acquisitions at genre sales firm DevilWorks. Fernandes has experience as a media director and theatre producer in his native Brazil.

Directed by Rob Gardner, What Lies Ahead was written by William J. Viglione and produced by Gardner, Viglione and Joe Michael Burke. The completed film follows the tensions between two young women who are thrown together on an unexpected road trip.

Additional titles on the slate include I Wrote This For You, directed by Jason Zavaleta and written by Brennan Keel Cook; Super November, directed by Douglas King; Eating Cars, directed by Trevor Hollen; The Last Rumba, directed by Guillermo Iván; Synchronicity, directed by Lyndon Horsfall; and Reach, directed by Leif Rokesh.

Yates commented: “I moved to London penniless after having lived in Italy for seven months and L.A prior to that. After being put into lockdown and luckily furloughed, starting a film sales company seemed like the only thing I actually knew how to do, and after attending the markets for over half a decade, the only natural option. We approach our work with a collaborative mind set, over flowing with passion, energy and a gargantuan work ethic. Basically, we’re your playful, gale force friends in these mad times.”

View this article at Deadline.