I wanted to do something different today. For those unaware, I did a pitch contest recently called the High Concept Club Contest. You pitched me ideas for four weeks and I picked the best ones. These writers then had six months to go write their script.
For my favorite ten ideas, I offered to look at the outlines of the scripts so I could provide some guidance and help the writers know if they were on the right path. I think everybody agrees that Dragonvault (formerly Wyvern) was one of the scripts people were looking forward to the most. Here is that logline: A crew of bank robbers are recruited to carry out the most terrifying heist of their lives, stealing a hoard of gold from the lair of a real-life dragon. Heat meets the Hobbit.
So I was looking forward to this outline. Cause I wanted to make sure Finn was on the right path. So, what I’m going to do today is give you the outline he sent me and then my response. That way, you can see how I see screenplays and the ways in which I think the writers should direct their story. This doesn’t mean I’m right. Only that I’m hoping some of these thoughts inspire the writer in ways they would not have been inspired without the notes.
So, with that in mind, here is Finn’s outline…
Dragonvault (formerly known as Wyvern)
Logline: A crew of bank robbers are recruited to carry out the most terrifying heist of
their lives, stealing a hoard of gold from the lair of a real-life dragon. Heat meets the
Hobbit.
Protagonist: George Larsen- a high-class professional thief, a planner and organizer for
cash and jewelry heists in London. Raised in a bleak industrial town in Wales, he is
motivated to amass a fortune, seeking the security and respect wealth brings. He is
professionally successful but socially isolated, without family or friends.
Character Arc/theme: from thief (greed, isolation) to knight (human connection, self-
sacrifice)
Outline
Act 1
Teaser
1980. In an isolated mountain range in North Wales, a speeding car veers off the road.
Inside, a married couple fight to the death over a lump of gold marked with the symbol
of a dragon.
Sequence 1- the Mountain
The present. The mountain rage is under the ownership of American fracking firm
HarCor. Professional thief George Larsen infiltrates the firm’s security perimeter around
the mountains by hijacking a HarCor truck. With him is disgruntled fracking surveyor
Daniel Rayburn.
As they scale the tallest mountain in the range, Cromen Draig, they encounter their first
obstacle. A “galley trap”, a magic circle around the mountain that disorientates and
causes hallucinations in any who cross it, like the worst drug trip of your life. Larsen
almost falls to his death. By lashing themselves together with a rope and rigging up a
GPS tracker, they are able to reach the summit alive.
At the top, they use a tomography ground radar to reveal a vast maze of tunnels and
vaults beneath the mountain.
Rayburn explains that three thousand years before, a great Welsh sorcerer-king lured a
horrifying dragon into the deepest vault beneath the mountain with an immense hoard
of gold as bait. It has been trapped inside ever since. Dragon’s gold is highly addictive.
Those who come in contact with it risk becoming psychotically obsessed.
In seven days, HarCor will begin exploration of the mountain and reveal the hoard
within. Larsen will have a week to break into the vault and claim the treasure for himself.
Larsen is skeptical but agrees to organize the heist.At the HarCor office, the firm’s psychotic fixer, Billy Vaspall, kills an antique dealer with a broadsword for a fragment of dragon’s gold in the dealer’s possession.
Sequence 2- the Crew
Larsen recruits a crew of specialist criminals. We get a glimpse into the lives of each:
• Irene Montpellier- an ageing aristocratic safecracker. Larsen’s former mentor.
She lives alone in a house filled with stolen art
• Katya Al-Pashia- a Kurdish gunwoman stuck in her Northern English hometown,
torn between her beloved family and a desire to escape.
• Yehor Zarofsky- a Ukrainian drone pilot living in a tiny apartment in Manchester
with his wife and daughters, desperate to provide for them.
Brian Kerry- a motor-mouthed miner turned bank robber from Ireland.
• Niamh Ferguson- a disgraced Scottish mountaineer, recently released from
prison after the murder of her rival in the Alps. A cold-blooded sociopath.
Act 2
Sequence 3- Preparation
The crew set up base in an abandoned farmhouse near the mountain. Unbeknownst to
them, their arrival has been spotted by HarCor. Vaspall puts surveillance on the crew.
The crew race against the clock to prepare for the heist. The legend tells of three deadly
barriers intended to keep the dragon trapped; the Maw, the Hand and the Eye.
Al-Pashia purchases high powered rifles from a dealer in Amsterdam. Kerry steals
mining equipment.
The night before the heist, the crew carry out final preparations. Al-Pashia and Larsen
have an intimate scene testing the rifles, there is a clear connection, but no time.
The heist begins the next night. The crew scale the mountain, under a barrage of heavy
snow. Vaspall leads a team of mercenaries in pursuit.
Sequence 4- Traps
Zarofsky uses his drones to find the concealed entrance, an impenetrable living door
built into the summit of the mountain, the Maw. Montpellier sets to work on the intricate
lock. But the door fights back. The door’s “jaw” bites off her hand. Bleeding out, she
must direct Larsen to finish breaking the lock before she dies.
The tension within the crew rises. Al-Pashia suggests retreating. But Larsen is
committed, and they continue on.
Through the mountain door, the crew narrowly avoid plummeting to their deaths down
the sheer thousand-foot drop on the other side. As they attempt the perilous climbdown, the wall is revealed to be a mass of horrific grasping hands. Ferguson is almost
dragged to her death by them. The crew must climb down without touching the wall.
After barely surviving the climb down, the crew venture into the maze of tunnels,
heading for the main vault. Al-Pashia and Zarofksy try to leave but Larsen convinces
them to forge on.
The crew, tensions fraying, face the final trap, The Eye. A passageway lined with cursed
mirrors. Kerry is trapped in the mirror world when he makes eye-contact with his
reflection. In doing so, he unleashes a monstrous version of himself in his place.
The crew must defeat the Kerry-thing without looking at their own reflections. Larsen
saves the heist but permanently traps Kerry by shattering the mirrors with an explosive,
leading to a brutal falling out with Al-Pashia.
Midpoint
Sequence 5- the Hoard
The crew open the gate at the end of the passageway and at last they are into the vault
itself. A vast and cavernous hall, with the only illumination coming from their flashlights.
Everywhere are towering mountains of treasure. Here sleeps the dragon itself, a huge,
grotesque creature, pallid from a thousand years without light.
The crew must silently begin transporting the gold out of the mountain without making
any noise that could wake the dragon. They nervously track the dragon’s heartbeat with
a sensor for early warning of it awakening. Ferguson almost brings one of the hills of
gold tumbling down, trying to hoard some for herself, and the dragon stirs.
Slowly but surely, they ferry the gold out onto the mountainside in strict silence. For a
brief moment, success seems within reach.
As the final load of gold is stowed for transport out, Vaspall’s mercenaries attack the
vault wearing night vision goggles. Not only is Rayburn wounded but their gunfire
awakens the dragon.
Sequence 6- the Attack
The dragon incinerates the mercenaries. The heist crew attempt to hide in the
cavernous vault as the dragon hunts them. A tense experience in the complete
darkness of the vault as they can hear the dragon approach their hiding place.
In the pitch black, they attempt to sneak out. But Ferguson betrays them. She calls out
to the dragon and offers it the intruders in return for a share of the gold. The dragon tears Ferguson apart. Zarofsky pilots his drones directly into the dragon’s mouth and sacrifices himself in theensuing explosion. It delays the dragon enough for Larsen, Al-Pashia and the wounded Rayburn to escape back through the tunnels, with the dragon in pursuit.
When the crew reach the mountainside, they plant explosives around the door and plan
to bring the mountain crashing down on the dragon as it pursues them. They have the
explosives rigged and are ready to trigger the trap when Vaspall attacks, beheading
Rayburn.
Act 3
Sequence 7- the Getaway
There is a brutal close combat fight which ends with Vaspall falling to his doom and
Larsen only narrowly avoiding the same fate.
But the battle with Vaspall has slowed them down. The dragon breaks out of the
mountain and attacks. Only Larsen and Al-Pashia left.
They race down the mountain. Larsen is seized in the dragon’s claws. Al-Pashia must
use her rifle to snipe him free, firing on the dragon’s claws to force it to drop him. He
survives the fall to the ground, battered but alive.
Together they reach the woods at the bottom of the mountain and attempt to hide. But
the dragon unleashes its flaming attack. The whole forest burns. Larsen and Al-Pashia
must escape.
In the escape, Larsen is separated from Al-Pashia. He makes it back to the farmhouse.
There is a car waiting. He could get away now with enough gold in his backpack to make him a rich man.
Sequence 8- Dragonslayer
But he cannot abandon Al-Pashia. He prepares hidden spike traps in front of the
farmhouse and lures the dragon towards it with the gold he has left. The dragon attacks,
almost burning Larsen to death.
But Larsen succeeds at luring it onto the hidden spikes. The dragon crashes to the
ground but it is still alive. Larsen must avoid the acid blood spraying from the dying
beast in a final brutal battle at close quarters. Finally, he beheads the dragon.
We end with Larsen and Al-Pashia, together, wounded but alive.
CARSON’S NOTES TO FINN
I think we need to start with a heist. Something really clever where we show why Larsen is top tier. But maybe the take ends up being much smaller than expected. The whole crew is pissed. They were promised more. Larsen is starting to come face to face with reality, that this modern world doesn’t reward real heists anymore. Everything is virtual. Online. Crypto. He’s becoming extinct (not unlike dragons).
Then someone comes to him with this crazy tale about a dragon and gold in a mountain. This is key. Nobody really thinks a dragon is involved. And they certainly don’t believe that a dragon is still there now. Although the buried gold is old enough that a lot of ancient approaches to guarding it were used. The kinds of things you could imagine (certain vaults) were created by people who believed in dragons. But again, nobody actually thinks there’s a dragon. Larsen most of all. He’s Sculley. I think a character like that would be fun.
But to be clear, the gold haul is supposed to be LARGE. That’s all that Larsen cares about. He’s still skeptical that this gold would even be there. But he needs a big score (for some reason – his last heist cost him a fortune to research and prepare for and it gave him back barely half that).
He hires someone who knows the mountain and studies it. Finds out about the fracking somewhere in here, which obviously complicates the plan. Especially when they hear that the fracking team is going to go into the mountain soon. Ticking clock. They have to move faster than they thought.
They have to put together a team. And I want one addition. A knight. Or someone who was once related to a knight. The guy who originally tells Larsen about the mountain suggests it. Basically, they need his knowledge, especially if there’s going to be a dragon. Again, Larsen scoffs. A dragon? Seriously? He thinks that part is utter bullshit. But he agrees to employ the knight. Also, I think you should create a slightly bigger crew. I want a few people to die on the way in. Just to show how high stakes this is. Make it like Aliens. There will be lots of casualties.
I do not like that the gold casts a spell on you and makes you greedy. I think that’s silly. Besides, they’re all greedy anyway! They’re going after dragon gold! They don’t need cursed gold to make them more greedy.
I like the idea of three major obstacles they must pass.
Something needs to happen to accelerate the job. The fracking company needs to move in three days ahead of schedule instead of their original seven. So the whole plan is accelerated. Which of course makes it prone to more mistakes.
I don’t like a living door. First, I think it’s kinda silly. Second, I want us to be unsure of if dragons are real until we get into the lair. So if we’re showing magical doors first, we give that away. Also, that makes me think of Harry Potter. I want to think of Heat.
I don’t like grasping hands. Again, too magical. Too Harry Potter
People wanting to quit. I like that. It creates a harder and harder situation if they lose people. But the quitting needs to directly affect the mission. The person who quits or dies, for example, is the one who was needed to open the vault. Something like that. You may say, ‘Then how do they open the vault???’ GOOD! Cause that means the audience is wondering that too.
Transporting this much treasure is logistically the hardest part of the deal. So how the hell do they plan to do that? Nothing in the outline seems to indicate they’re prepared for that. Gold is heavy as shit so what’s the plan here?
I love a Heat-like firefight in a dragon lair. This should be the second best set piece in the movie (after the dragon chasing ending). I want a scene that will eclipse the firefight in Heat. Which will be difficult. You can’t just have peopel hiding behind stone colums and stacks of gold shooting guns. You must make it a really well thought out firefight with multiple stages and unique ways in which they’re fighting each other. For example, maybe to start, when they first sense people are coming, they have to hide. And the only place to hide is on the dragon, who’s still sleeping. The whole team having to hide on the dragon and not wake it up could be a great precursor to the set piece itself.
An overall note for you is that, throughout the script, make things TEN TIMES MORE IMPOSSIBLE FOR THE CHARACTERS THAN YOU ORIGINALLY PLANNED TO DO.
Even if you have no idea how you’re going to get your characters out of these problems. Key guy is needed for a key action? Kill him before he gets there. We should be doubting they have any chance to achieve this at literally every stage of their mission. This is the stategy that made me fall in love with Osculum Infame. Apply it to your story.
“But Ferguson betrays them. She calls out to the dragon and offers it the intruders in return for a share of the gold.” – not sure I like this. Unless this is your Burke from Aliens character? That wasn’t clear. But I don’t like magical gold is my point.
How does one behead a dragon? I would be open to allowing the dragon to escape. Sequel. But I’m not saying it’s necessary.
Additional Note Just For This Scriptshadow Post: As I’m looking over these notes, I’m realizing that pretending there’s no dragon may not be possible. The whole point of a heist is that you’re stealing something from someone. If there’s nobody preventing you from taking the money, then there’s no heist. So my idea about ‘maybe there isn’t a dragon’ doesn’t make complete sense. Unless we can straddle the line maybe? They plan for a dragon but Larsen never truly believes there’s a dragon. Also, I suppose, we could make the inside of the mountain itself extremely challenging, which would imply you need someone good with heists. Curious about others’ thoughts on this.
And any of you have any great ideas for this script, share them with Finn here! Let’s help him make this script amazing!
