TBellScout, a startup owned by Dutch tech billionaire Steven Schuurman, has acquired the main technology of Flawless, the British-American company behind AI tools that alter actors' mouth movements to match dubbed or rewritten dialogue. Deadline reported the deal on October 30, 2026, and said Schuurman confirmed it.
The purchase covers Flawless' TrueSync visual dubbing system and DeepEditor, a post-production tool for changing dialogue and performances without reshoots. The technology belonged to Flawless Holdings Limited, the UK trading company, which is in administration. Insolvency firm BTG took control of the company and carried out the sale. No price was reported.
Schuurman, who founded the Dutch software company Elastic, declined to comment beyond confirming the deal, according to Deadline. Flawless co-founder Scott Mann also declined to comment.
What Flawless built
Mann, a British film director, co-founded Flawless with technology executive Nick Lynes in 2018, according to The Next Web. Mann has said he started looking for a better way to dub films after seeing a foreign-language version of his Lionsgate crime thriller Heist, which starred Robert De Niro, in which, he said, the script had been rewritten and the actors' gestures no longer matched. He then worked with the researchers behind Deep Video Portraits, a 2018 technique that reanimates faces from video.
TrueSync, the company's first product, adjusts lip movements so that actors appear to speak a dubbed language. It was named one of Time Magazine's best inventions. DeepEditor lets filmmakers change lines or performances after filming. Flawless also built Artistic Rights Treasury, a rights management system, but Deadline identified only TrueSync and DeepEditor as part of the sale.
The tools were first tested on Mann's 2022 thriller Fall, where they replaced swearing so the film could get a PG-13 rating. Deadline said the technology has since been used on hundreds of Hollywood productions, many of them undisclosed because studios do not want to reveal their use of AI. Public projects include the US theatrical release of the Swedish science fiction film Watch the Skies, made with XYZ Films, as well as Michel Gondry's The Book of Solutions, Tatami and the South Korean film Smugglers. Flawless took a consent-based approach, and Mann told The Next Web the plan was presented to the Screen Actors Guild before Fall was released.
How the company ended up in administration
Flawless Holdings Limited was incorporated in England on May 14, 2020, according to Companies House, where its status is now listed as in administration. The register shows the administration started on October 13, 2026, with Jeremy Karr and Robert Ferne of BTG Begbies Traynor named as practitioners.
Deadline reported that Sprk Capital, a UK technology lender, appointed BTG. Sprk holds fixed and floating charges over the company, a form of security for its loans. Unlike Chapter 11 in the US, UK administration hands control of a business to the insolvency practitioner instead of its directors.
The circumstances behind the sale are not clear. Deadline noted that it followed the arrival of Amit Kapur as Flawless' co-CEO in March 2026, after he had served on the board since 2024. Kapur did not respond to Deadline's request for comment. Companies House filings also show several share allotments at the company between May and August 2026.
What is left of Flawless
The sale does not cover the whole group. Mann and Lynes still control Flawless AI Inc., the US company through which they built relationships and signed deals with Hollywood studios. Deadline said the pair are exploring a new venture.
Flawless raised about $100 million to develop its technology, according to Deadline, and the money came from wealthy individuals rather than venture capital firms. That figure is what the company spent building its tools, not what TBellScout paid. The buyer's plans for TrueSync and DeepEditor have not been made public, and neither side said whether any Flawless staff will move to TBellScout.
Consent rules and a new owner
Flawless built its business around rules meant to reassure studios and actors. Mann told The Next Web that its training data was legitimately sourced rather than scraped, that every output was rights-cleared, and that significant changes to a performance required further consent. He described the company's systems as narrow models built for specific tasks.
Deadline described the technology as endorsed by SAG-AFTRA. That history does not settle how TBellScout will license or use TrueSync and DeepEditor, and Schuurman has not said what he plans to do with them.
