Filmmaker Niki Byrne Signs With Underground Ahead of Toronto Bow for 'The Julia Set'
Filmmaker Niki Byrne has signed with Underground Management, a move that lands just as she prepares to premiere her film The Julia Set at the Toronto International Film Festival. The deal, reported by The Hollywood Reporter on 21 August 2026, pairs Byrne with a management company whose recent track record at Toronto carries real weight in the market. A year earlier, TIFF helped launch fellow Underground client Curry Barker, whose film Obsession was acquired by Focus Features and became a box office hit. The Barker precedent gives the signing a practical edge: buyers pay attention when Underground brings a film north in September.
The Julia Set is a coming-of-age drama set in the world of competitive mathematics and academia. It stars Chase Infiniti, described as the breakout from One Battle After Another, alongside Jason Isaacs and Gillian Anderson. The cast mixes a fresh face with proven names — the kind of combination distributors look for when weighing a festival acquisition. The film is already generating interest from potential buyers, though it will not be screened for them until the festival itself, according to The Hollywood Reporter. That wait is standard at TIFF, where acquisition titles (films seeking distribution) play for audiences and industry before deals take shape.
The producing team behind The Julia Set runs deep: Jeffrey Penman, Ellen Goldsmith-Vein, Lee Stollman, Gillian Anderson, Nick Scherma, Tayler Haynes, Andrey Epifanov, and Eleonora Granata-Jenkinson. Anderson's dual role as star and producer is notable, linking her creative investment to the film's business structure.
Byrne's path to this moment is unconventional. A California native, she attended Boston University, where she studied history and political science as well as astrophysics — a background that sits comfortably behind a film about competitive mathematics. She previously held a communications role at 20th Century Fox before the Disney acquisition closed in 2019, an insider vantage point on how studios operate from the inside. She continues to be represented by attorneys Hirsch Wallerstein, with Underground's Aaron Folbe now on the management side.
Byrne is also assembling her next project, which she wrote and which is being kept under wraps. No title, no logline, no attachments disclosed. For a filmmaker heading into her first major festival premiere with an already-secretive second film in motion, the signing with Underground reads as a bet on what comes after Toronto — not just the film arriving, but the career being built around it.
