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MercuryMedia alumni launches new indie

Hugh Edwards, the former sales director of UK documentary distributor MercuryMedia, has launched a new TV production and distribution outfit in the UK.

Aspect Film, a new London-based film and television sales and production company, has been jointly founded by Edwards and Aneta Kianekova to offer producers a new outlet to reach a wider audience.

The company first hopes to cement its place in the market with children's project My First Day and two completed feature films: Chris Munro's British crime-caper Back In Business, starring Martin Kemp, Chris Barrie and Brian Blessed; and John Aguirre's US teen comedy The Utopian Society.

Aspect has UK television and international in-flight rights to Back In Business, which played in select UK theatres earlier this year, and international rights across all media for My First Day and The Utopian Society.

"The company has quickly gained an impressive roster of high-profile theatrical titles in development, which are due for release this year," said Edwards. "We are currently producing and coproducing a slate of feature films, with a broad range of budgets, starting from US$2.5m, and we're also talking to a number of accomplished producers of TV programmes."

Aspect is also at work coproducing a movie titled Bad Day - WWII, which stars Sevy di Cione, Christopher Showerman and Basil Hoffman. The film, which will be accompanied by a documentary, is set in occupied France during the winter of 1942, and centres on five estranged American special-ops soldiers and one Brit, forced to undergo a series of harrowing events.