Neil Sacker and Julie Savay-Ross have teamed up to form Creative Union Entertainment (CUE), a new LA-based international sales and financing outfit which kicks off with Wesley Snipes-starrer When The Ride Is Ruff.

Sacker, a former executive vice president, business and legal affairs at Miramax Films and senior counsel at Warner Bros is chief executive of the new company. Savay-Ross, formerly vice president, international distribution, at Initial Entertainment Group (IEG) is president and chief operating officer.

CUE will fully finance, produce and distribute When The Ride Is Ruff, an action film starring Snipes as a man wrongly blamed for the murder of the leader of a rival motorcycle club racing against time to prove his innocence. Snipes is also producing with Victor McGauley through his Amen-Ra production company in association with Rudy Langlais of Nightrain LLC and Jeffrey Klein of Smokestack Productions. Sacker and Ross executive produce the film, which is to shoot next February.

When The Ride Is Ruff is the first of a seven-picture production and worldwide distribution deal between CUE and Langlais and his Nightrain partner Jeremiah Chechik, director of Benny And Joon and The Avengers, and Klein and his Smokestack co-chief Chris Bongirne. Other films to follow include action drama Children Of The Dust and supernatural thriller The Life And Death Of William Freeman.

CUE has also been engaged as foreign sales agent on family drama Madison, starring Jim Caviezel. The film premiered at this year's Sundance Film Festival. In addition, the company is taking on two titles which Savay-Ross was handling at her independent Voltaire Entertainment Group - comedy The Wedding Contract, which re-teams Bill Murray and Sigourney Weaver, and The Italian, being produced by Mike Marcus and Carroll Kemp.

Joining Sacker and Savay-Ross is Yarek Danielak, who takes up the post of vice president of international distribution. The former Mandalay Pictures and Franchise Pictures executive was previously president of Fahrenheit Films, a foreign sales company he owned. Danielak will report to Savay-Ross but also work with Sacker and CUE consultants Joe Woolf and Kirk Stambler to develop the company's relationships with production funds.