From Deadline|London editor Tim Adler: Revolver Entertainment, the British distribution company, plans to make 3 low-budget youth or urban movies a year. Each film will be budgeted up to £1 million. The company is high on its first in-house production, Shank, a futuristic gang thriller which sales agent AV Pictures has already sold to Benelux, France, Germany and the Middle East and will be released in the UK on 80 screens on March 26. A tie-in pop video sung by London rap star Bashy, featuring movie clips, has been viewed by 80,000 within a week of it being posted on YouTube, putting it 3rd on the website’s Most Viewed list this week. Revolver is releasing its next urban title about basketball Freestyle this weekend. The distributor helped finance the film. Revolver has already decided on its next project, which its production arm Gunslinger will start filming in June. And a Shank sequel is in the works.

“Ideally, we’re looking to produce films which speak to a British youth audience,” said Revolver’s CEO Justin Marciano. He told me that he and his team have been “reverse engineering” these films by deciding what sort of movies audiences want to see and then making them. “It’s something the studios do all the time, just with several noughts on the end of the budget,” he told me. But Marciano was booed when he talked about reverse engineering at a recent film festival. Still, it’s possible that Gunslinger could become a Roger Corman-like lab for young filmmaking talent. Nothing like that really exists here despite official government schemes aimed at older arthouse filmmakers.