In March of 2022, English musician and actor Ed Westwick was sighted in Malta in March of 2022. He is best known for playing Chuck Bass on The CW’s ‘Gossip Girl’, as well as Vincent in the TV series ‘White Gold’. Shortly after, Romanian actress and model Madalina Ghenea, known for her portrayal of the role Sofia Loren in House Of Gucci, was also spotted touring Malta. It was eventually revealed that the two were shooting a film called ‘Deep Fear’.

The survival thriller centres on a world-travelling yachtswoman named Naomi (Madalina Ghenea) in the Caribbean, who runs into a group of shipwrecked survivors while travelling alone to meet her boyfriend Jackson (Ed Westwick). Things take a turn for the worst when the survivors turn out tobe drug traffickers, who force her to jump into shark-infested waters to retrieve kilos of lost cocaine. 

Six weeks of filming were dedicated to the project, which included locations such as the Malta Film Studios’ indoor and outdoor tanks. The film was released a year later on March 11, 2023. Deep Fear also had its international premiere in Malta last summer at the first Mediterrane Film Festival, which was attended by lead actors Ed Westwick and Madalina Ghenea among other stars.

Following its Netflix premiere in August, the action-packed movie captured the attention of thousands of people worldwide and rose to number 1 on Netflix’s global top 10. The movie hit number 1 in Sweden, Poland, Austria, Germany, Croatia, Romania, the Netherlands, Belgium, Turkey, Germany and, naturally, Malta. Moreover, it came in second in the US and the UK.