Angad Paul, co-financier of Guy Ritchie's Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, and ex-Victor Film Company chief Vic Bateman are launching sales on fashion world comedy Hatter through their new sales company AV Pictures.

X-Men star Alan Cumming will star in the film, which newcomer James Killough will direct. Also on AV Pictures' debut slate are black comedy Dog, thriller The Filmmaker and romantic comedy School For Seduction.

Paul and Bateman aim to work with new filmmakers, packaging and producing along with selling films. But Paul, who set up AV Pictures as a wholly-owned subsidiary of his family business the Caparo Group, has little inclination to repeat the financing formula of Lock, Stock.

The steel manufacturing scion described the collection of private investors who bankrolled the film as the riskiest way of filmmaking possible.

"Back then you didn't have tax funding in the UK like you do now," he said. "If people had wanted to buy Lock Stock when we were making it, we would have sold it. No one would touch it with a barge pole."