It’s not too rare for those more involved in the work behind-the-scenes to step up to the director’s chair. Barry Sonnenfeld, the DP of much of the Coen brothers’ earlier work, made his directorial debut with The Addams Family movie and became the boss of True Blood, and Danger: Diabolik and Black Sunday director Mario Bava started off as a cinematographer. Now, Paul Franklin, the visual effects supervisor for game-changing movies like Interstellar and Inception is trying his hand at directing with the upcoming action-thriller Resurface.

Variety reports that Franklin, who worked on the Dark Knight Trilogy alongside Christopher Nolan (and was nominated for an Academy Award for The Dark Knight), is taking the helm of Resurface, a more “moderately budgeted” action-thriller about two men who get separated from their crew after an earthquake traps them 35,000 feet underwater. Broken Road Productions’ Todd Garner described the picture to Variety as a lower-budget movie that has “the look and feel of a tentpole.” For example: New Line’ Into the Storm was a mere $50 million, which, if you can believe it, is small potatoes compared to Avengers: Age of Ultron, which weighs in at an estimated $250 million. Maybe the mid-budget action movie isn’t dead after all!

Franklin recently completed work on his first short film The Escape, based on a sci-fi short story by Robert Sheckley. Garner told Variety, “With his award winning background in visual effects and experience in creating unknown worlds, Paul Franklin is the perfect director to immerse audiences in this ambitious and unique underwater adventure.”

Resurface doesn’t currently have a cast or release date, but this is good news for those of us who miss the era of mid-budget blockbusters.

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