Genre: Period/Light Fantasy
Premise: After the fall of Troy, the legendary Greek king Odysseus must survive monsters, vengeful gods, and impossible temptations on a perilous voyage home to reclaim his kingdom and family.
About: Christopher Nolan’s latest is powerhouse at the box office, taking in 125 million dollars. This is a movie that, just a couple of weeks ago, was projected to hopefully make 80 million dollars. In a movie world where everyone is underperforming, Nolan is one of the few people who you can count on to overperform.
Writer: Homer & Christopher Nolan
Details: 2 hours and 45 minutes
By far, the coolest thing about The Odyssey is the fact that 2700 years ago, this guy wrote this story and it was so powerful and affected people so much, that 2700 years later someone is making a movie out of it.
Think about that for a second. To write something so impactful that 2700 years from now, somebody will make a movie about it. Or whatever the equivalent of a movie is in 4726. That’s pretty freaking awesome and shows the power of the written word.
Just imagine for a second Homer… staring at the blank page (or the blank air since I don’t think they had paper back then), just like you do every day. Mentally writing something down. Not liking it. Changing it. Being unsure. Figuring something out. There may have even been a moment where he said, “You know what? I don’t think this is very good. I’m not going to finish it.” But then he forged his way through the doubt and finished it anyway. And now people all over the world are going to see the visual adaptation of that story. It’s amazing when you really think about it.
The other big cool thing about this movie is Christopher Nolan. I love the fact that he’s still making movies the old fashioned way. Not just because that’s “how they used to do it.” But Nolan understands that when you record reality (as opposed to computer generated artificiality), the viewer’s suspension of disbelief is stronger. The audience feels like they’re seeing something that’s real.
And he’s just great at steering the ship. There were so many times during this movie where I would admire the composition of a shot. The lighting in a shot. The music in a scene. There were several times where I marveled at the costuming. I never think once about costumes but, in this movie I did. I loved certain performances, like John Leguizamo and Samantha Morton’s. And I loved the fact that when we were watching those people on a boat, they were all really on the boat. I wouldn’t even be surprised if Nolan taught them all how to properly row like they did 2000 years ago and the actors were all rowing the boat to locations themselves.
But you want to know something funny?
I was bored out of my mind watching this movie.
If you haven’t seen the movie or read the poem it was based on, Odysseus wins the Trojan War. Meanwhile, back in Ithaca, everyone assumes he’s dead. The timeline here is never explained in a clear way but, the main idea is that many years have passed and everyone assumes Odysseus is dead except for his wife, Penelope, and his young son, Telemachus.
The journey home for Odysseus is a greatest-hits album of Greek mythology. Odysseus outsmarts the Cyclops, escapes the Lotus-Eaters, survives the witch Circe, sails past the Sirens, outsmarts a whirlpool, gets drugged into a nonconsensual relationship, and even ventures into the underworld, where he reconnects with all of his fallen soldiers.
Odysseus is told by the dead that he shouldn’t show up in Ithaca as himself or they’ll kill him. So he disguises himself as a begger, where he eventually infiltrates the lunch room where the Ithacans spend 99% of their daily life, and engages them in a 1 vs. 100 battle. All so he can finally be with his wife and son.
How bored was I, you ask?
At one point I fell asleep.
Look. I just praised the fact that this story has lasted 2,700 years. But let’s be real. Any 2,700 year old story is going to have issues when you drop it into the modern day. Going off to war was a rite of passage back then. Everybody understood it. Today? The vast majority of us live in air conditioned homes and have food delivered straight to our door. Let me repeat that. We don’t even have the battle strength to get our own food!
So that whole aspect of the story was just a big fat “whatever” to me. I didn’t care. Nor did I care all that much about Odysseus getting home, which is kind of a problem since that’s the entire point of the movie.
For starters, I didn’t like his wife. She came off as a bitch. So I wasn’t exactly rooting for her to get her husband back. His son had never even met the guy. So I wasn’t all that invested in him getting his father back, either.
Then, as I was leaving the theater, I overheard someone say that Odysseus didn’t even want to get home. He wanted to stay away. And I thought, “You know what? He really didn’t seem like he wanted to get home.” Sure, he occasionally took a step in that direction. But the dude spent ten years hanging out on a beach before finally deciding to leave. That doesn’t exactly scream, “I can’t wait to get home.”
So then what’s the point of the movie? If the main character doesn’t really want to get home, what’s the engine driving the story? Is it just the inevitability of the writer needing to end the story and, therefore, forcing Odyssesus to return by his own (the writer’s) hand so that we can get to “The End?”
I know a lot of you will say, “You didn’t get it Carson.” Hand raised! I agree with you. I did not.
At one point, Odysseus is just chilling with this woman in a desert house that he borrowed from the Dune movie and he’s half-confused because he’s doping on drug flowers, and he’s not even sure why he’s there.
That’s when we learn this woman drugged him for seven years to forget to go home?? Come on. That doesn’t make sense at all. For starters, THEY’RE IN A DESERT!!!! THERE ARE NO FLOWERS!!! But let’s say that there’s a secret nearby flower garden. Even then! You’re saying you were able to keep him drugged every single second for seven straight years?????
Come on already.
It didn’t make sense, people. I need my stories to make sense.
2,700 years ago, stories didn’t have to make total sense. There wasn’t an internet logic-checking you. Heck, there weren’t even reviewers logic-checking you. You were one of the first stories. You could make up random rules and people just accepted them. But in 2026? No. We don’t just go with it anymore. And the Drug Woman sequence wasn’t the only example. There were a lot of moments like that.
I knew the movie was in trouble when we got to the Cyclops scene. I’d heard this set piece was incredible. I heard it was going to bring the house down. It wasn’t. It didn’t. It was… average. Which ended up being the theme of the movie. There was a shit-ton of average.
I didn’t even understand the rules of the Cyclops. He was already stumbling around like he was half blind. Then they actually blinded him and… he stumbled around like he was slightly more blind? It was all very murky and poorly constructed.
The pacing didn’t help either. Instead of playing the escape out in real time, everybody just goes to sleep right next to the Cyclops. You know, the giant thing who’s been murdering and eating you all day. I guess he doesn’t eat people after 8 p.m.?
There was a lot of clumsy, murky storytelling like that throughout the movie.
By the midpoint, I was dying. I was tapping my feet anxiously. I was rolling my eyes. Especially whenever we cut back to the wife and son. Who, by the way, spent 20 years hanging out in the lunch room. Did these people ever go outside????
I’d heard that the ending was amazing so I kept holding out hope for that.
It wasn’t.
It was like everything else in this story. Average.
I respect Christopher Nolan as a filmmaker. But I think he’s a terrible writer. That’s where he always sabotages his work. The cutting back and forth in time here was an attempt to make the story feel more sophisticated. In actuality, it just made things unnecessarily harder to follow.
The one truly good thing about this movie was learning that there was an actual dude named “Mentor” and that’s where the word “mentor” came from. That was honestly the only moment where my mind and body lit up and I felt something resembling excitement.
This movie is so boring guys. It is boring boring boring.
I do not recommend spending money on it.
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: One of the earliest lessons in storytelling is that the strength of your narrative engine is directly tied to how desperately your protagonist wants to achieve their goal. Whenever Odysseus is singularly focused on getting home, the story has urgency and momentum. Whenever that desire wavers, so does the narrative. The audience can only invest as much energy in a goal as the protagonist does.
You can begin pitching loglines in the comments section RIGHT NOW!
The contest is COMPLETELY FREE!
This is unlike any screenplay contest you’ve been involved with before. All of those contests let anybody in as long as they pay. My contest is free. Therefore, I demand only the best ideas. I’m looking to create great screenplays that every studio in town is going to want to read because the concept has already survived a public trial by fire.
How does it work?
You get to pitch 5 loglines every weekend for four weekends. We are already in weekend 2. Weekend 1 resulted in 16 screenplays making it into the contest. You can see all 16 of those loglines here. There are some REALLY GOOD ONES. That’s the bar you’re up against.
If you aren’t sure what a high concept is, go back to last week’s inaugural post where I explain in detail what ‘high concept’ means, and give you examples of high concept as well as examples of what’s not high concept.
Before you start pitching your ideas, you’re going to want to look at the rules. For those of you who were here last weekend, the rules are basically the same, however I’ve tweaked a few things. So you might want to re-read them.
If you come up with a script idea strong enough to get into the contest, you will have 6-7 months to write your script. The prize is the exposure. Industry people are watching this contest. If you write something good, I will review it. And if you write something extremely good, I’m going to get on the phone and do everything I can to get you representation.
But what I love most about this contest is that even if you don’t knock it out of the park with the screenplay, you’ll still have a concept that’s better than 95% of the ideas being pitched out there. That’s a huge advantage. Great concepts get read requests off the logline alone. And unlike most writers, you won’t just think your idea is good. You’ll have proof that hundreds of people responded to it. Most writers never get that. They write their ideas on a wing and a prayer.
Okay, let’s get to the rules!
1) There will be 4 pitch weekends. Friday through Sunday. Pitching ends every Sunday at 11:59pm Pacific Time. This is the second of those 4 weekends.
2) You can pitch five loglines each weekend.
3) Make sure you pitch each logline in its own comment. Do not pitch all 5 loglines in a single comment. This is because I need to vote yes or no on individual loglines.
4) I will vote on every single logline pitched. I will give you either a “YES!”, a “yes,” a “strong maybe,” a “maybe,” or a “no.” An all-capital “YES” Is the Holy Grail. It means you not only get in, but you can also send me a 5 page outline of your script before you write it and I will give you notes on it. This is HUGE because what I learned from the Blood & Ink contest is that a lot of writers went down weak creative paths that I could’ve prevented had I seen their outline.
5) A “yes,” still gets you in. Just without outline privilege.
6) If you get a “maybe” or a “strong maybe,” you then have, if you want, 300 words to pitch that idea to me. Tell me more about the story or the characters or what you’re thinking of doing with it. I will then use that information to decide, on Tuesday and Wednesday, whether that idea moves on.
7) The large majority of ideas will get a “no.” Try not to get offended. The bar is high here. I’m not here to make you feel good. I’m here to find great movie ideas.
8) Upvoted Entries – Upvote any loglines that you like (besides your own). If an idea gets 15 upvotes, the concept gets in. However, if I don’t like the concept, I’m vetoing it.
9) Golden Weekend Ticket – However, the ‘strong maybe,’ ‘maybe’ or ‘no’ entry with the most upvotes each weekend automatically gets in. So one user-voted entry will get into the contest each weekend. Therefore, even if I’ve voted “no” on something, and you like the idea, you still want to upvote it because that entry might win the Golden Weekend Ticket. I have special plans for those scripts once written which will involve users reviewing them.
10) Posters – You can include an AI poster with your logline for TWO IDEAS PER WEEKEND.
11) You can get multiple ideas into the contest. But you must choose only one to write.
12) You CAN pitch scripts that have already been written.
A quick reminder that my popular logline consultation service ($25 per logline, $100 for 5) is available. If you want a more extensive reason for why I didn’t pick your logline, order one. If you want to see ahead of time if a logline has a shot, order one. You can also do a deluxe logline consult ($50) where we keep workshopping the logline until it’s perfect. I believe 4 loglines got into Blood & Ink that way. But most of them did not. So, don’t think it’s a guarantee. If you want to use this service, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com.
Finally, keep in mind that I am going to be living my life during these weekends. In fact, I’m going to see The Odyssey today (Friday) which is like 9 hours long, and then I have a fairly extensive list of errands I have to do. So if your idea is stuck in moderation or waiting in the comments section for a vote, I WILL vote. It just might take a little longer than you want.
I’m going to blast out a newsletter letting everyone know about the pitch weekend. So, it should get crazy. :)
Who’s going to have that standout “HOLY SHIT!” idea this weekend?
I can’t wait to find out!
No voting today. Just appreciation of the initial contestants.
Here are the 15 concepts that made it into the competition. Plus ONE EXTRA who I decided I couldn’t leave behind. I give you a full explanation as to why he got in without the votes. Details below.
In the meantime, congratulate the writers. And for the writers of the scripts? Start writing! You’ve got a whole week head start on the competition. I would take advantage of that.
If you haven’t made it into the competition yet or if you are one of these 16 writers and you think you can come up with even better concept, the game starts all over again this Friday. You’ve all got five more loglines to pitch.
Our contenders so far are…
Title: Tailback
Genre: Mystery / Thriller
Logline: Stranded on a bridge in miles of gridlocked traffic on the hottest day of the year, a single mother wakes to find her six-year-old daughter missing and must trace her last known moments through the surrounding vehicle occupants and their dash-cam footage before the traffic moves and her child is lost forever.
Writer: Arthur
Title: 25th Hour
Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller
Logline: A blue-collar technician accidentally intercepts a hidden frequency that gives him access to the secret twenty-fifth hour, used exclusively by the global elite to rig world events, forcing him to survive nightly hunts as he tries to expose their conspiracy.
Writer: Tencoach
Title: The Massacre
Genre: Action-Thriller
Logline: When King Herod learns from three Eastern mystics that the King of Kings has just been born, he orders mass infanticide, forcing a desperate father to smuggle his three small children out of the foreign city of Bethlehem while panic, mayhem, and Herod’s death squads sweep across its people.
Writer: Steffan
Title: First Boy
Genre: Supernatural Horror
Logline: When a mother realizes her teenage daughter’s new boyfriend is impossibly the same boy who tried to kill her twenty-five years ago, she must stop him before her daughter becomes his next victim.
Writer: Steven Rauber
Title: Just Another Day
Genre: Black Comedy
Logline: Stuck for ages in a time loop and half crazy, a young woman decides on this particular rewind day to use her decades of accumulated knowledge about her town to make life as chaotic and hellish for its residents as she can; but then tomorrow actually comes.
Writer: Brenkilco
Title: Wyvern
Genre: Action/Fantasy
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.
Writer: Finn Morgan
Title: Eternal Stakes
Genre: Thriller/Supernatural
Logline: A secret society of vampires offers a terminally ill detective the promise of immortality if he can hunt down a human serial killer who’d been tracking and killing their members.
Writer: Dev
Title: Tenmile
Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller
Logline: In New York City, anyone who slows below ten miles an hour dies; the only person who knows why is a woman racing across the city to save the daughter who can’t stop running.. and won’t stop running from her.
Writer: Branko Maksic
Title: HEAR/SAY
Genre: Thriller
Logline: At a global tech summit, a deaf accessibility coordinator lip-reads an assassination plot against a whistleblower about to expose a deadly cover-up, forcing her to prove what only she saw before his keynote begins.
Writer: David Cahill
Title: The Cape
Genre: Thriller.
Logline: After a massive Memorial Day car crash blocks all lanes of the Bourne Bridge, a nervous man becomes trapped above the Cape Cod Canal, surrounded by police officers, with his dead wife’s body in his trunk.
Writer: Mr. Blonde
Title: Off The Bench
Genre: Comedy
Logline: When a diplomatic crisis strands a tiny country’s World Cup squad behind closed borders, a ragtag group of expats with day jobs get a chance to take their place and represent their homeland on soccer’s biggest stage.
Writer: Federico
Title: Aftershock
Genre: Action/Survival
Logline: When an earthquake shatters his high‐rise, interrupting his rooftop suicide attempt, an agoraphobic FBI informer must fight his way down the crumbling tower to rescue his family — whilst being hunted by the gang he betrayed — before the aftershock collapses the skyscraper completely.
DIE HARD meets THE RAID
Writer: Paperback Writer
Title: Dream On
Genre: Action/Comedy
Logline: When their patients’ nightmares manifest in the waking world, it’s up to a team of sleep psychologists to solve the parasomnia problem before the nightmares destroy the city.
Writer: ScriptChick
Title: Doors
Genre: Surrealist apocalypse adventure
Logline: The world’s doors have stopped working the way they should. What once took you from one room to the next could now strand you literally anywhere else on the planet, with no way of returning the way you came. When his teenage daughter steps through an open door and into an active warzone on the other side of the globe, a widowed father will stop at nothing to track her down and bring her home in an odyssey that spans the entire planet.
Writer: Connor L
Title: Love Neighs
Genre: Action Comedy
Logline: Set in the 15th century during the Hundred Years’ War between France and England, a band of disgraced knights get their shot at redemption when they’re tasked with escorting a French erotic romance writer from the frontlines to the palace of the King of England, his number one fan.
Writer: Maksim
Title: Mate
Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller
Logline: An unlucky-in-love woman meets the man of her dreams, only to discover he is a Neuralink patient whose body has been hijacked by her obsessive AI assistant determined to consummate their relationship.
Writer: Ben Stoker
Why I decided to allow this in: The more I think about this idea, the more I think it is the best modern update to Fatal Attraction I’ve ever come across. I also love one of the reader’s suggestions that anyone with a neural-link could become the antagonist. So the midpoint could be her killing the dude, or getting the neural link taken out of him. But now that person at work is looking at her weird. Now the person in the park seems suspicious. Could they be neural-linked and hacked?
Who do you have your money on? Share your thoughts below!
These are movie pitches from this past weekend that received a “maybe” vote from me. You will now vote for your favorite pitches. Only the top FOUR will make it into the contest!
We have our first official eleven entries, ready to be sent to the island to find love. They are…
Just Another Day by Brenkilco
Wyvern by Finn Morgan
Eternal Stakes by Dev
Tenmile by Branko Maksic
Hear/Say by David Cahill
The Cape by Mr. Blonde
Aftershock by Paperback Writer
Off The Bench by Federico
Doors by Connor L
Dream On by ScriptChick
Love Neighs by Maksim
Mason Triumphant, by Kit Anderson, scored just as many upvotes as Love Neighs but I’m making a personal choice here. I’m worried about a superhero movie where nobody ever uses superpowers, especially in a high concept contest. But I’m sure Kit will be pitching some sweet ideas over the next three weekends. So, it’s not over yet!
Also, shame on you guys for not voting in Robo-Hoe. So much shame being sent your way. I would definitely save that idea for the next comedy contest on the site, though.
Okay, moving on, we’re doing the same thing we did yesterday. I’m going to post all the ‘maybes’ down in the comments section. Each script idea will occupy its own comment. Upvote the ideas you like. Simple as that. And you can upvote as many as you want. But please only upvote the ones you genuinely like and for which you’d want to see the movie.
Now, this next part is going to be controversial. But there are too many ‘maybes’ to place in this mini-voting contest. Therefore, I got rid of a bunch of them. It wasn’t easy. But I went with my gut. By the way, I couldn’t find COUNTDOWN by Simon Veksner or Six Pack by Ken. If you can find those, post them below. I will decide whether to include them in today’s voting.
You have until 11:59pm Pacific Time tonight (Tuesday). Only FOUR scripts are going to make it through today. So every vote counts!
Title: FINALE
Genre: Dark Comedy/Horror
Logline: After being publicly fired from the most popular show on television, a disgraced actor races to flip the script when he finds himself trapped as his character in the episode in which he is fatally written out.
Writer: Matt
Title: KILL VEHICLES
Genre: Action/Comedy
Logline: In a race to disable America’s early warning system ahead of a nuclear attack, a self-aware movie villain finds himself under-resourced, overwhelmed and well-intentioned, leaving him in danger of saving the day and becoming his worst nightmare – a hero. (‘The Last Action Villain’)
Writer: Auckland Guy
Title: The Massacre
Genre: Action-Thriller
Logline: When King Herod learns from three Eastern mystics that the King of Kings has just been born, he orders mass infanticide, forcing a desperate father to smuggle his three small children out of the foreign city of Bethlehem while panic, mayhem, and Herod’s death squads sweep across its people.
Writer: Steffan
Title: The Sword
Genre: Action-Comedy/Fantasy
Logline (version #2): A small-time mob courier loses Excalibur on the streets of London and has one night to get it back before he becomes collateral damage, or discovers he’s the one it was meant for.
Writer: Byron Camacho
Title: 25th Hour
Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller
Logline: A blue-collar technician accidentally intercepts a hidden frequency that gives him access to the secret twenty-fifth hour, used exclusively by the global elite to rig world events, forcing him to survive nightly hunts as he tries to expose their conspiracy.
Writer: Tencoach
Title: They did not live happily ever after
Genre: dark comedy
Logline: When a fairly tale Prince and Princess find themselves incompatible after the wedding is over and real life sets in, they begin a messy and petty divorce that unravels the fabric of their kingdom, allowing the real world to bleed into theirs.
Writer: T D
Title: TAILBACK
Genre: Mystery / Thriller
Logline: Stranded on a bridge in miles of gridlocked traffic on the hottest day of the year, a single mother wakes to find her six-year-old daughter missing and must trace her last known moments through the surrounding vehicle occupants and their dash-cam footage before the traffic moves and her child is lost forever.
Writer: Arthur
Title: ATM
Genre: Contained Action/Thriller
Logline: When he discovers the ATM where his fiancée was murdered is the most notorious robbery hotspot in America, a traumatized man becomes obsessed with returning there night after night, engineering violent confrontations he can claim as self-defense in order to eradicate the gang responsible. But as his abilities improve, what was originally an act of revenge turns into a violent addiction.
Writer: Arthur
Title: First Boy
Genre: Supernatural Horror
When a mother realizes her teenage daughter’s new boyfriend is impossibly the same boy who tried to kill her twenty-five years ago, she must stop him before her daughter becomes his next victim.
Writer: Steven Rauber
Title: The Pot Washer
Genre: Action, Buddy Comedy
Logline: When a debt-ridden restaurant owner becomes the target of New York’s criminal underworld, he finds an unlikely savior in his new, mild-mannered pot washer—a fugitive former Russian general.
Writer: Paddy
Title: MATE
Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller
Logline: An unlucky-in-love woman meets the man of her dreams, only to discover he is a Neuralink patient whose body has been hijacked by her obsessive AI assistant determined to consummate their relationship.
Writer: Ben Stoker
Title: SIX-PACK
Genre: Action Comedy
Logline: When an unassuming journalist stumbles upon six cans of whoopass in a laboratory, he must work out when the best times are to open each can to boost his fighting skills as he battles his way through the neighbourhood of a vengeful mob boss.
Writer: Ken
BEGIN THE VOTING! If you want to make sure you see all the entries below, you can filter Disqus comments by “OLDEST.”
In the comments are each of the loglines on the brink of getting in. The ones with the most upvotes will make it into the contest. The others will fall by the wayside!
This was a very fun first weekend.
A lot of ‘no’s’ came down the pipe. Leading to some frustrated writers, some of whom I even got in a fight with. No hard feelings. I get it. Writers are passionate people!
Okay, let’s start off with those of you who got five brutal rejections. I’m not talking about the writers who got a “No. But this story has potential.” I’m talking about the no’s that were harsh and to the point.
If you are one of those writers, I would strongly recommend you get a logline consult. Because there’s an underlying problem with your loglines that you need to address or you will ALWAYS get rejected. Not just by me. By everyone in Hollywood. So, you can get single logline consults for $25. 5 loglines for $100. Another thing I’ll do is, for $50, send me all five of your logline entries that got rejected and I will explain the overall reason for why they got rejected as well as how to improve your logline writing. E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com if you’re interested.
Okay, let’s move on to our three big winners of the weekend. The four YES’S.
Title: Just Another Day
Genre: Black Comedy
Logline: Stuck for ages in a time loop and half crazy, a young woman decides on this particular rewind day to use her decades of accumulated knowledge about her town to make life as chaotic and hellish for its residents as she can; but then tomorrow actually comes.
Writer: Brenkilco
Analysis: This is what every screenwriting teacher throughout history tells you to do. Take a well known movie setup and add a fresh spin to it. This adds a fresh spin to the loop sub-genre. Now, thinking about this, I do have a pretty big concern. Let’s say you’ve been stuck in a loop for 1000 days. So you raise hell on everyone around you. And then a real tomorrow comes and you have to deal with the repercussions of what you did to all these people. Well, would you really care? You’re finally out of the loop. You’d be so happy that you’d laugh off the fact that everyone hates you now. So, we’re going to have to figure out a solution to that. Also, Brenkilco has become rather notorious for chirping from the peanut gallery. Is he ready to be placed on the grand stage and judged? We’ll see.
Title: Wyvern
Genre: Action/Fantasy
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.
Writer: Finn Morgan
Analysis: This is the logline people should point to as the definition of what a true high concept looks like. However, there’s a big challenge ahead as well. The reason heists are so cool is because there are all these puzzles that you have to solve (the computer security, the guards, the escape route, etc). Whereas, when I imagine this, I imagine a big giant cave bedroom and that’s it. They have to get the gold from the room and then run outside. That’s kind of boring. So Finn will have to come up with a more interesting way to set up where the gold is. Maybe they get it and have to move through the forest with the dragon flying around, looking for them. That could be cool. But what about the actual heist itself?
Title: Eternal Stakes
Genre: Thriller/Supernatural
Logline: A secret society of vampires offers a terminally ill detective the promise of immortality if he can hunt down a human serial killer who’d been tracking and killing their members.
Writer: Dev
Analysis: I love the way the elements come together in this one. There are a lot of loglines being pitched where Element A is completely different from Element B, which is completely different from Element C. Making the logline look more like a grocery list than a movie. Here we see what happens when the elements work together. I’m worried that the setup at the heart of this is pretty standard and that that could result in a “been there done that” screenplay. So that will be a big challenge for Dev.
Title: Tenmile
Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller
Logline: In New York City, anyone who slows below ten miles an hour dies; the only person who knows why is a woman racing across the city to save the daughter who can’t stop running.. and won’t stop running from her.
Writer: Branko Maksic
Analysis: I think this is the next Birdbox. But it has WAY MORE potential than Birdbox. I also love that it would create a movie that nobody has ever seen before. The characters have to be moving. Movement movement movement always. But there is a potential cheesy factor here I’m worried about. This will be all about the set pieces. Is Branko up to the challenge?
Next up, we have our USER VOTED winner of the week, with 26 votes!
Title: HEAR/SAY
Genre: Thriller
Logline: At a global tech summit, a deaf accessibility coordinator lip-reads an assassination plot against a whistleblower about to expose a deadly cover-up, forcing her to prove what only she saw before his keynote begins.
Writer: David Cahill
Congrats to David!
Okay, so, what are we doing today? Today, I am going to post each of the ‘strong maybe’ candidates down in the comment section. Each entry will have its own comment. From there, your job is to upvote on your favorites. There are 11 entries. ONLY SIX WILL MAKE IT THROUGH. And your upvotes will determine which of those six make it into the High Concept Club Contest. So everyone, please upvote! Here are the 11 entries…
Title: AFTERSHOCK
Genre: Action/Survival
Logline: When an earthquake shatters his high‐rise, interrupting his rooftop suicide attempt, an agoraphobic FBI informer must fight his way down the crumbling tower to rescue his family — whilst being hunted by the gang he betrayed — before the aftershock collapses the skyscraper completely.
DIE HARD meets THE RAID
Writer: Paperback Writer
Title: Glider
Genre: War
Logline: World War II. When a B-17 collides with an enemy aircraft during a mission over Germany —leaving the cockpit exposed and killing the crew via decompression— the pilot of a towed glider must reach the bomber controls before fuel runs out, climbing the 300-foot tow cable without a parachute, with a storm approaching and a Luftwaffe fighter harrying him intent on finishing the job.
Writer: Andrea Moss
Title: GNAW
Genre: Action, Horror
Logline: Europe, 40,000 years ago. Sealed in a labyrinth of caves by an avalanche, a band of Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals must set aside their ancient rivalry to survive the cave bears, hyenas, and hostile clans already lurking in the dark. Clan of the Cave Bear meets The Descent.
Writer: BoxGoblin
Title: DOORS
Genre: Surrealist apocalypse adventure
Logline: The world’s doors have stopped working the way they should. What once took you from one room to the next could now strand you literally anywhere else on the planet, with no way of returning the way you came. When his teenage daughter steps through an open door and into an active warzone on the other side of the globe, a widowed father will stop at nothing to track her down and bring her home in an odyssey that spans the entire planet.
Writer: Connor L
Title: MASON TRIUMPHANT
Genre: Action
Logline: Decades after sacrificing his powers for an ordinary life, a recently widowed farmer who was once the world’s greatest superhero is hunted by the grown children of the enemies he killed.
Writer: Kit Anderson
Title: Robo Hoe
Genre: Comedy
Logline: On the gritty streets of future Harlem, a ragtag crew of aging hookers wages war on a corporate sex bot stealing their clients, their turf, and their mans.
Title: Dream On
Genre: Action/Comedy
Logline: When their patients’ nightmares manifest in the waking world, it’s up to a team of sleep psychologists to solve the parasomnia problem before the nightmares destroy the city.
Title: The Cape
Genre: Thriller.
Logline: After a massive Memorial Day car crash blocks all lanes of the Bourne Bridge, a nervous man becomes trapped above the Cape Cod Canal, surrounded by police officers, with his dead wife’s body in his trunk.
Writer: Mr. Blonde
Title: OFF THE BENCH
Genre: Comedy
Logline: When a diplomatic crisis strands a tiny country’s World Cup squad behind closed borders, a ragtag group of expats with day jobs get a chance to take their place and represent their homeland on soccer’s biggest stage.
Writer: Federico
Title: The Coxswain
Genre: Comedy
After his wealthy parents are implicated in a college admissions scheme, a freshman looksmaxxing influencer now must prove that the Ivey offer he received is legit…in women’s rowing.
Writer: Paul DeWolf
Title: LOVE NEIGHS
Genre: Action Comedy
Logline: Set in the 15th century during the Hundred Years’ War between France and England, a band of disgraced knights get their shot at redemption when they’re tasked with escorting a French erotic romance writer from the frontlines to the palace of the King of England, his number one fan.
Writer: Maksim
So, how should you vote here? Vote for the movies you’d actually want to see. If you think they’d all be movies you’d see, vote for all of them. If you wouldn’t even check any of these out on streaming, don’t vote for any of them. If you’re having trouble finding all eleven entries, just sort comments by “OLDEST” and they will all come up.
Tomorrow, we’re doing the first half of the “Maybes,” and then Wednesday, we’re doing the second half of the “Maybes.” So, lots of voting ahead!
And if you crapped out this weekend, not to worry. You still have three more weekends and 15 pitches left! Start prepping your next batch of loglines!
