Sentient Entertainment founder and CEO Renee Tab and producer Christopher Tuffin have launched sales, production and finance company Sentient Pictures International (SPI) and will oversee alongside former Relativity COO Andrew Marcus and Taken director Pierre Morel.
Boutique management and production company Sentient and SPI will function as separately owned and operated entities. SPI announced on Thursday (10) an inaugural sales slate led by Sentient productions Last Meals with Delroy Lindo and Boyd Holbrook and sci-fi thriller D.O.A. which Morel will direct, and produce with Tab and Tuffin.
Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (Farming) will direct Last Meals, about a disgraced, misunderstood White House chef who ends up many years later working in a maximum-security prison cooking last meals for death row inmates who forms an unlikely bond with a man on hunger strike whose execution day is fast approaching.
Justin Piasecki wrote the screenplay based on his Nicholls Award-winning screenplay Death Of An Ortolan and principal photography is set to commence in January 2023.
The film is produced by Revelations Entertainment’s Lori McCreary, Gary Lucchesi, Morgan Freeman, and Michael McKay, alongside Sentient’s Tab and Tuffin. UTA Independent Film Group will co-represent US rights with SPI.
Morel will direct D.O.A. from a screenplay by Ben Magid (The Call) that centres on a man who following the death of his family dedicates his life to hunting down ghosts that illegally cross into the human world. An encounter with an energetic runaway forces him to face his own prejudices and stop a war before it’s too late. Morel will produce alongside Tab and Tuffin.
SPI is building a global distribution network and in addition to continuing its relationship with Italia in the Middle East, Greece Turkey and India, has closed strategic first-look deals with Leonine in Germany, Switzerland and Austria, Volga in Russia and CIS, Empire in South Africa, and Vertical Distribution in Eastern Europe.
“Our ambition is to align ourselves with partners who came to this business to entertain and move audiences of all walks of life,” said Tuffin. “Film was once a medium that brought us together versus divided us. Our goal is to bring that commonality back to the filmgoing experience.”
SPI intends to expand its operations into studio co-finance, as well as continue to be a strong provider for streaming platforms. The company also announced a deal with Atlantic Screen Music for global music publishing and administration.
Dallas and Los Angeles-based Sentient Entertainment recently sold Universal the remake rights to 2010 horror classic The Others starring Nicole Kidman. The company is currently in production in Colombia on action comedy Freelance starring John Cena and Alison Brie from Morel, and secured the remake rights to Alejandro Amenábar’s horror-thriller 1996 Goya-winning Thesis.
Sentient’s credits include 2018’s Peppermint starring Jennifer Garner, French car heist thriller Overdrive starring Scott Eastwood and Ana de Armas, Line Of Duty with Aaron Eckhart and the upcoming Sound of Freedom starring Jim Caviezel based on the life of Operation Underground Railroad founder Tim Ballard who has rescued more than 2,000 children from sex traffickers.
Former EuropaCorp head of sales Pascal DeGove helped establish SPI’s international sales arm. Veteran production executive Andrew Schefter will serve as EVP of production after serving as head of production at Social Capital Films under Tuffin.
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