DeAPlaneta leads Shochiku up 'Blind Alley'

SITGES, Spain -- Japan's Shochiku has acquired all Japanese rights to Spanish horror film "Blind Alley," which world preems in Competition Friday at the Sitges Festival.Spain's DeAPlaneta closed the deal. It adds to other pre-sales struck on "Alley" before DeAPlaneta took on sales duties on the title, such as for Mexico (Corazon Films), Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia.The feature debut of Spanish screenwriter-turned director Antonio Trashorras, whose credits as a scribe include Guillermo del Toro's 2001 "The Devil's Backbone," "Alley" turns on a young cleaning woman at an off-season hotel in Benidorm who accidentally locks herself up in the laundry with an apparent psycho-killer."'Blind Alley' observes the rules of the horror genre: It takes place over one night, there's a beautiful girl in distress, and a threat in the shadows," said Gorka Bilbao, DeAPlaneta sales exec.Cuban-born Ana de Armas, one of Spain's fastest-rising young film/TV actresses ("Sex, Party and Lies," "7 Days in Havana"), plays the young woman. Chile-born Leonor Varela ("Blade II," "Arrested Development") and Colombian TV and film actor Diego Cadavid ("A Ton of Luck") co-star."Alley" is produced by Miguel Angel Faura's Roxbury, one of Spain's top quality-genre producers, TV-turned-film production house Esa Mano Amiga and Antena 3 Films, co-producer of Juan Carlos Fresnadillo's current Spanish chart-topper "Intruders," as well as Dynamo Capital, Colombia's biggest private equity film fund.Dynamo has rights to Latin America, DeAPlaneta to the rest of the world outside Spain, Bilbao said.After Sitges, "Alley" will next be seen at Fanomenon in Leeds in the U.K. Market premiere will be at November's American Film Market.Catalonia's Sitges fest closes Saturday. Contact the Variety newsroom at news@variety.com