Submarine Entertainment is picking up worldwide sales rights on Chris Skotchdopole’s feature directorial debut “Crumb Catcher.” The move comes just ahead of the darkly comic thriller’s Fantastic Fest world premiere.

Skotchdopole wrote, directed, edited, and produced the movie and Submarine Entertainment, a notable sales and production company, will launch sales out of the festival, which runs from Sept. 21 to Sept. 28 at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar in Austin, Texas. “Crumb Catcher” was described by Fantastic Fest programmer Anna Bogutskaya as a “chamber piece that melds extreme anxiety with the worst salesmanship imaginable.” The film follows a newlywed couple held captive by an entrepreneur desperate to finance his outlandish invention with a blackmail plot.

With ten years of experience working with Glass Eye Pix, the New York independent genre production outfit led by horror auteur Larry Fessenden, Skotchdopole has amassed numerous credits on several films, including working as the cinematographer on Fessenden’s “Depraved,...