Actor Jesse Eisenberg has begun venturing into filmmaking, and his latest project tells one of the most unique stories to ever come out of an American mall. Eisenberg is an executive producer on Secret Mall Apartment, an upcoming documentary that just released its official trailer. The film follows the true story of eight Rhode Islanders who secretly build an apartment inside one of the state’s busiest malls as a prank— and end up living there for four years.

The trailer begins to unravel the mystery behind the debacle, which took place at the Providence Place mall in Rhode Island’s capital city, Providence. The eight youngsters devised a plan in 2003 to build a fully functioning apartment in the mall, and they lived there until 2007, when they were caught. “When the mall was being built, I saw a space that I could not figure out what it would be used for,” one of the mall inhabitants says in the trailer. “We went looking for that anomoly in the architecture and we snuck ourselves in there.”

As the trailer shows, this apartment was hardly just a small void in the mall. The eight people “snuck in furniture, tapped into the mall’s electricity, and even secretly constructed a brick wall with a locking door, smuggling in over 2 tons of cinderblock,” according to the film’s synopsis. They also filmed almost every aspect of the elaborate prank, allowing original footage from the time to be included in the documentary.

Eisenberg Connected with the Story Easily

For Eisenberg, the collaboration between himself and Secret Mall Apartment’s director, Jeremy Workman, seemed natural. “I thought Jeremy had lightning in a bottle, because this movie was so amazing. It turns out that he is just very talented,” Eisenberg told Collider about the film. “This new movie is also like lightning in a bottle, you watch this movie and think, ‘Wow, I bet this is just the — complete luck of this filmmaker that he had this footage, had this access to the story.’ But it’s really just Jeremy being very talented.” Eisenberg added of the film:

“It was just like this incredible story … this is a movie about a cultural shift happening at that moment.”

In addition to directing Secret Mall Apartment, Workman also serves as a producer through Wheelhouse Creative. Additional executive producers include Allen Altman, Cathie Altman, Matthew Spain, Ivan Williams, Peter Haberman, Lance Hoffman, Marnie Black, Scott Black, Amy Zelnick, and Brad Zelnick.

Secret Mall Apartment is in select theaters on March 21.

via Collider