EXCLUSIVE: First title on the slate for the Santa Monica-based sales and distribution company is the thriller Dead Drop starring Luke Goss, Cole Hauser and Nestor Carbonell. Lightning will serve as executive producer and handle world sales at the AFM next week.

“It’s the logical next step in our company’s development and progress to actively produce our own feature films and control our supply line of top-quality titles for the worldwide marketplace,” said Lightning president Robert Beaumont. “We aim to deliver films that the buyers need to fulfill their own release goals and we could not be happier to be sharing in that risk and reward.”

R Ellis Frazier is currently directing Dead Drop from a screenplay by Ben Budd. Goss (pictured) stars as a CIA who survives a 5,000 fall from a plane after the man he thought was his best friend shoots him and pushes him out. The operative returns to his undercover role inside a Mexican smuggling ring to find his assailant and rescue his girlfriend.

Frazier produces with Jacov Bresler and Justin Nesbitt. Beaumont serves as executive producer alongside Lightning consultant Richard S Guardian and Ray Mortier.

Lightning’s vp’s of international sales Mathilde Epstein and Alexandra Cocean will introduce to buyers in Santa Monica.

The sales slate includes hit Toronto documentary How To Make Money Selling Drugs, comedy The Hot Flashes with Brooke Shields, Daryl Hannah, Virginia Madsen, Camryn Manheim and Wanda Sykes and the Russian animated 3D film Kikoriki: Team Invincible from producer Timur Bekmambetov.