Antonio Banderas Just Traded His Zorro Sword for a Cartel Boss Role in a Shark-Infested New Thriller ‘Above & Below’

Shark movies have become something of a summer staple over the past decade, popping up almost every year with a familiar formula of stranded swimmers and lurking predators padding out a lean runtime. Most of these films blur together, leaning on jump scares and open water panic rather than trying to bring anything genuinely new to the subgenre.

This year’s entry is aiming to break that pattern, and it is doing so by welding two genres together that rarely share screen time. A new trailer for ‘Above & Below‘ has surfaced online promising a mix of cage diving terror and full-blown crime thriller, landing in theaters before the month is even out.

The story follows five friends on what begins as a routine shark diving excursion off the coast of Mexico, only for the trip to spiral into chaos once the group accidentally discovers a cache of cocaine belonging to a dangerous drug cartel. Two of the friends, Tatiana and Kaley, end up trapped in a shark cage and forced by the cartel to retrieve a bag of drugs from the seafloor, leaving them to battle great white sharks, dwindling oxygen, and armed killers waiting above the surface.

Banderas leads the cast as Burns, the ruthless figure behind the operation, described by the film’s producers as a man forged in violence, broad shouldered and cold eyed, someone whose mere presence commands both respect and fear. He is joined by Laura Marano in the lead survival role of Tatiana, alongside Christina Ochoa, with Marano using her character’s wit and resourcefulness to try to outlast both the sharks and the men hunting her group.

Production wrapped last year after filming took place in Spain, including the Canary Islands, giving the underwater sequences a distinctive visual backdrop. The film closed international sales deals across more than a dozen territories including Germany, France, Italy, and Spain ahead of the American Film Market, signaling real confidence in its crossover appeal well before the trailer even dropped.

Rounding out the ensemble are Timothy V. Murphy, Louis Mandylor, and Jess Liaudin, alongside Diego Llinás, Donncha Tynan, Ryan Bertroche, Ramiro Alonso, Rodrigo Poisón, and Mario Tardón. ‘Above & Below’ swims into theaters on July 29, and with Banderas trading his usual charm for outright menace as a cartel boss, this looks like one shark thriller that might actually have the star power and premise needed to stand out from the crowded pack.

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