BERLIN — Freddie Highmore, star of U.S. TV hit “The Good Doctor,” will topline “Way Down,” an English-language heist movie partnering two of Europe’s biggest media corporations, Spain’s Mediaset Espana and France’s TF1 Group.
TFI Group’s cinema division TF1 Studio will handle international sales and also domestic distribution in France. “Way Down” will be directed by Jaume Balaguero (“[REC]”). Pic starts shooting in April.
Ghislain Barrois and Alvaro Augustin at Telecinco Cinema, which is Mediaset Espana’s film arm, are producing with El Tesoro de Drake AIE, Ciudadano Ciskul (Francisco Sanchez) and Think Studio (Eneko Lizarraga) in collaboration with Mediaset Espana and TF1 Studio. Highmore himself will take a producer credit.
To shoot in and around Madrid and coastal areas in Spain and England, ”Way Down” follows a gifted engineering graduate student (Highmore), who masterminds a plan to break into one of the most impenetrable and dangerous banks in the world during the 2010 soccer World Cup final.
A legendary lost treasure will be deposited in the bank’s safe for just 10 days. But nobody has ever managed to break into the bank, it has no blueprints, and its security system includes an underground river that floods the safe room if anyone succeeds in breaching it.
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“I’m delighted to be returning to Spain and to collaborate with Jaume on this wonderful project,” said Highmore.
An international cast of actors will play the bank robbers. The bank staff will be played by Spanish actors, said Barrois, CEO of Telecinco Cinema, whose credits include “The Impossible” and “A Monster Calls” from “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” director J.A. Bayona, and Guillermo del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth.”
The screenplay for “Way Down” is from Andres Koppel, Borja Gonzalez Santaolalla, Rafael Martinez, Michel Gaztambide and Rowan Athale.
“I have always wanted to embark on a tale of heists, banks and infiltrations. Genre at its purest,” said Balgueró.
“But this project meant so much more!” he added: “An unassailable bank. A story about pirates. A legendary lost treasure. And the monumental final of the 2010 World Cup. All nicely stirred together. How could I say no?”