After careful pre-production work lasting more than six years, one of the most ambitious film projects in Spanish cinema is now finalizing the details for the start of filming and its presentation to the international market. WAY DOWN, one of the productions of Telecinco Cinema (Ghislain Barrois and Álvaro Augustin), Ciudadano Ciskul (Francisco Sánchez), Think Studio (Eneko Lizarraga) and El Tesoro de Drake AIE, with the participation of Mediaset España and Movistar+, will feature the British actor Freddie Highmore (The Good Doctor) in his leading cast under the command of Jaume Balagueró (REC, While You Sleep).
The French audiovisual group TF1 has joined the project to manage the international sales of the film, an action thriller based on the meticulous plan of a brilliant engineer to rob an impregnable bank taking advantage of the attention garnered by the celebration of the final of most anticipated football.
Filming in English for the film will take place from April to July in different locations in the capital and province of Madrid, Spanish coastal areas and England. It has Sandra Hermida as executive producer and production director and with the participation of Freddie Highmore himself as producer. The script was written by Andres Koppel, Borja González Santaolalla, Rafael Martínez, Michel Gaztambide and Rowan Athale.
According to Ghislain Barrois, CEO of Telecinco Cinema, “WAY DOWN is a true pan-European project, both at a creative and business level, in which we have been working hand in hand for more than six years with our fellow adventurers, Francisco Sánchez ( Ciudadano Ciskul) and Eneko Lizarraga (Think Studio). Furthermore, the cast reflects the different nationalities portrayed in the film, the Spanish from the bank on the one hand, and the thieves with a varied group led by a young English genius played by Freddie Highmore. The co-production is the fruit of the collaboration between two large audiovisual groups, each a leader in its market such as TF1 and Mediaset España, who join forces to undertake a project as ambitious as this one, which we have decided to entrust to one of the largest masters of fantasy and horror cinema, such as Jaume Balagueró.”
Recognized with numerous nominations and awards around the world, Jaume Balagueró, for his part, assures that “I have always wanted to embark on a story of coups, banks and infiltrations. Pure genre. But this project offered much more. An impregnable bank. A pirate story. A legendary lost treasure. And a great football final. Everything together and well shaken. Impossible to say no.”
Regarding Highmore’s participation as the protagonist, the director, who has been at the helm of three of the four films in the REC saga, in addition to While You Sleep, Fragiles, Darkness or The Nameless, states that “I tuned in with Freddie from the first time. what we talk. From the first moment we shared the same vision of his character. As they say, we spoke the same language. And also in every way because Freddie speaks impeccable Spanish.”
There is a bank completely different from any other financial institution. An absolutely impregnable bank. A bank that no one has been able to rob, of which there are no plans, no data, nor is there anyone alive who knows what pharaonic engineering was used more than a hundred years ago to build its vault. A real mystery…
But neither the laws of state nor the laws of physics scare Thom Laybrick (Freddie Highmore), the brilliant young engineer recruited to find out how to break the secret to access its interior.
The objective is a small treasure that will be deposited in the bank for only ten days. Ten days to discover the secret of the box, ten days to hatch a plan, ten days to prepare the assault, ten days to take advantage of an unrepeatable escape plan, when the most anticipated soccer final will paralyze the country and bring together hundreds of thousands of fans at the very doors of the bank…
