Brooklyn-based Roller Coaster Road Productions, best known for its documentaries (“History of Food”), has joined Paris’ Mad Films to develop one of the most singular titles hitting the market at this week’s Frontières Market at Fantasia: “High Pressure,” a literally immersive live action underwater survival thriller with a VR viewership option for key scenes.  

The producers have initiated talks for James Marsden (“X-Men”) to star in the film.

Paris-based Alba Films (“Daisy Quokka,” “The Wishmas Tree”) will handle the film’s theatrical distribution in France. Two-and-a-half minutes of an animated revisualisation of the movie will be presented at Frontières.

Set to be directed by Mad Films CEO Jean Mach and Nicolas Albany, co-helmers of the virtual world-themed “8th Wonderland,” a Fantasia 2008 best screenplay audience award winner, “High Pressure” sports the log line: “Two brothers. 80 meters down. 24 hours of oxygen.” 

Written by Mach, it turns on the Sallinger twin brothers, James and Dominique, media rock legends and a police obsession for pulling off daring, nonchalant heists and burglaries, before retreating to a decompression sphere hanging from an underwater cliff 80 meters down in the ocean somewhere off the American coast. 

This time round, however, having pulled off a heist at a social media billionaire’s home, the sub’s oxygen supply fails, trapping James in the capsule with only 24 hours of oxygen.

“In one word, this movie is about Freedom. For the first time, the two main characters of ‘High Pressure’ have the opportunity to live their lives as they wish. They are finally free. But paradoxically, one of them is trapped in an underwater sphere 80 meters down. In order to live this dream life that beckons to him, he will have to escape from the clutches of the depths and its dangers. And the task won’t be easy because it’s really not his day,” said Mach.

What marks “High Pressure” apart, he added, is that it’s as much a love as survival story. “If you also have a beautiful love story to live, it gives you that additional motivation to make it out alive. The audience, who knows your story, wants even more for you to survive and reunite with the love of your life. That’s what we tried to convey with ‘High Pressure.’”

Roller Coaster Road Productions, like all production companies, has to work across several genres, scripted being one we are pursuing with Jean and Nicolas’s ‘High Pressure,’ the story of two high-tech thieves who make a thrilling getaway from the cops, but find themselves trapped in a submersible in the unforgiving depths of the sea,” Burns said.

Mad Films and Roller Coaster Road Productions plan a classical theatrical release but also a VR experience. The audience will have the possibility to see four underwater action scenes with a VR headset, to feel like they are diving with the actors and are a part of the movie.

8th Wonderland also won a Special Jury Motion at the Brussels Int. Fantasy Film Festival (BIFFF). In pre-production, “High Pressure” is scheduled to shoot in 2024.

Paris-based Mad Films specialises in projects mixing new technology, VFX, animation and high-quality visuals. Leveraging its VFX studio, which has been making high-quality VFX for the past decade, Mad Film will be able to deliver spectacular but cost-effective visual effects, Mach argued. Mad Films series, such as “Point de Repères,·have sld to over 80 territories in part because of their visual effects.

Burns is a former EVP of production and chief science editor for Discovery Networks and National Geographic EVP of global content for NGC worldwide. He has won Emmys for “5 Years on Mars” (2008) and “Spirit of the Rainforest” (1993). He founded Roller Coaster in 2011. 

“I am best known for my work at National Geographic, Discovery and CuriosityStream, but really, every documentarian is a movie maker at heart. Documentaries have evolved into ‘non-fiction entertainment,’ using the storytelling devices and techniques of the movies,” Burns noted.