With reporting by Josh Horowitz.

If you want to make a successful drama, maybe you should consider setting your film in a submarine. It worked just fine for Tony Scott's "Crimson Tide," and now Kevin Macdonald is hoping to pull off the same magic with his new submarine thriller "Black Sea."

Starring Jude Law, "Black Sea" follows a ragtag crew on a speculative exploration for undersea gold. Obviously, they're headed for Mayday because when is a big-screen submarine ever not in danger of sinking?

Speaking to MTV News at the press day for the film, Law had a few thoughts on why the submarine genre is so successful, despite its predictability.

"And there's always going to be the 'We're going down!' moment," he said.

"You're relying on good characters, intense drama and reactions, and not a lot else," Law said. Well, unless you count some of the more standard submarine movie tropes.

"I guess you know that if you're going on a submarine to tell a film, something is going to go wrong. It's not like, 'That was the most successful and smoothest submarine mission we've ever been on!' And that's the end of the film," he added. "You kind of know that it's going to be one of those submarine films where something's going to break."

"Black Sea" dives into theaters on Friday, January 23.