Filmmaker Niki Byrne has signed with Underground Management as she heads into the Toronto International Film Festival with her feature The Julia Set, which stars Chase Infiniti alongside Jason Isaacs and Gillian Anderson. The signing marks a career milestone for Byrne, coming as the coming-of-age drama, set against the backdrop of competitive mathematics and academia, draws interest from potential buyers ahead of its festival screening.

Byrne, a California native who studied history, political science and astrophysics at Boston University, previously worked in communications at 20th Century Fox before Disney's 2019 acquisition of the studio. The Julia Set is produced by Jeffrey Penman, Ellen Goldsmith-Vein and Lee Stollman, alongside Anderson and several others, and follows a pattern seen last year when Underground client Curry Barker's TIFF title Obsession was picked up by Focus and went on to be a box office hit. Byrne is also developing an as-yet-undisclosed next project, which she has written herself.