Genre: Action/Comedy
Premise: The adoptive daughter of a legendary assassin returns home for his funeral… and finds herself in the crosshairs of her four highly trained, highly dangerous siblings.
About: This script has one of the flashier loglines on the Black List. The writer, Ryan Hooper, is just starting his career. The project is set up at Thunder Road, the production company responsible for John Wick, which implies this could be another project they’re looking to integrate into the John Wick universe.
Writer: Ryan Hooper
Details: 104 pages
Based on the main character’s name, I’m guessing it was written for Kravitz.
First off, good title.
Titles are always tricky and one way to stand out is to do a riff on a previous well-known title. Four Weddings and a Funeral is a well-known movie with one of the better titles in history. Take note that when you are riffing on other titles, it tends to work best when your movie is a comedy.
As for the concept itself, I think it’s pretty sexy. It’s a mix between Knives Out and Ready or Not. I could see a lot of executives flipping for that kind of pitch in the room.
But there is something about the idea that worries me. I’ll share that after the plot summary and let you know if the writer was able to overcome this issue.
Joel Ferrier is a legendary assassin who is part of a board of assassins who perform high level hit jobs around the globe. So it should be no surprise that he trains his four children to be hit men as well. There’s the oldest, image-is-everything Todd, then feisty Violet, then loving Dominic, then snazzy Portia.
And finally, there’s the mixed race youngest of the clan, Zoe. Zoe is adopted and, therefore, not treated equally by her brothers and sisters. In fact, they barely pay attention to her at all. So when they grow up and get a call that their dad died in Vegas of a heart attack, they’re actually kind of surprised to see Zoe show up for the funeral.
But what really surprises them is when the lawyer reads the will. All the money goes to Zoe’s mother. And since Zoe’s mother is dead, all the money goes to Zoe. Violet becomes enraged and decides right then and there, she’s going to kill Zoe. She lets the others know you’re either with me or against me. They decide they’re with her.
Zoe runs for her life and starts hiding around her family’s giant estate, eventually getting her hands on a jump drive. Zoe becomes convince that there’s more to this story of her father’s death and tries to find her way to a computer where she can look at what’s on that drive before Violet kills her.
She eventually finds out that her father, along with two other board members, were murdered by a stealth group of assassins led by Violet, who disguised the killings as suicides. Which means, of course, that Violet can’t allow Zoe to escape the estate. If she does, the other board members will know what she’s done, and kill her before she can complete her takeover. Can Zoe escape four of the most highly trained assassins in the world? I guess we’ll find out!
Today I want to talk about how some loglines can sound really good as loglines yet be really tricky to turn into screenplays. And Four Assassins is that kind of screenplay.
I love this logline. It’s fun. Kind of like a higher-stakes version of Knives Out.
But think about sitting down to expand this idea. For starters, you have to convincingly come up with a scenario where four siblings want to kill a fifth sibling. Since siblings don’t tend to want to kill each other, most of the motivations you come up with are going to feel forced.
Hooper began solving this issue right away by making Zoe adopted. She was never really a member of the family. But how do we go from that to: the four people you grew up with want to kill you?
It’s a huge leap and one that will determine the amount of buy-in necessary for the audience to suspend disbelief.
What Hooper ended up doing is making Violet the only true sibling who wants to kill Zoe (because Zoe has info about what she did to their father). For this reason, I can buy into Violet’s motivation. Her life is on the line if she doesn’t kill Zoe. But I’m not sure I ever bought into why the rest of the siblings agreed to kill Zoe.
They don’t have anything to protect. So, therefore, the only reason they’re going after Zoe is because the script needs them to, because the logline says that’s what happens. Which is a dangerous game to play as a screenwriter. You want your motivations to be strong for every character involved.
However, if you can get past that, it’s a solid script.
I liked that Zoe had her own goal. Because that made her active. I recently did a consultation that was set up in a similar fashion. The main character was bouncing around, running from the bad guys. But because she never had a goal of her own, she came off as reactive the whole time. The antagonist was the one driving the story. And while it’s not impossible to build narratives around the antagonist driving the narrative, you have to note that whenever you do so, your hero will suffer a bit. Cause ACTIVENESS is often a character’s most defining trait. Therefore stripping your hero of that makes them less defined.
By giving Zoe this mystery to solve: What’s on this jump drive? And, on a deeper level, who was her mom and how was she associated with Joel? It gave her more to do than just run away. She becomes an ACTIVE character.
So if there’s any big takeaway from this script, that would be it. If you’re writing a movie where your hero gets chased, add a storyline where they, themselves, are chasing something. My favorite movie ever, Star Wars, applies this device. Luke and Obi-Wan aren’t just running away from a pursuing Vader. They’re trying to deliver the Death Star plans to the leaders of the Rebellion.
Four Assassins is one of those scripts that you nod your head after and say, “Not bad.” The craft is strong. The concept is fun. You can see the poster. But the story didn’t feel like the writer took enough chances. There was a safety net feel to everything that kept the script from becoming memorable. Scripts need to take at least one giant risk to be memorable. That never happened here. With that said, I think the movie would make for a cool trailer. And if a director elevated it not unlike the way Stahelski and Leitch elevated the John Wick script, who knows?
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Be careful about using jokes that could’ve been used 20 years ago. Hell, be careful about using jokes that could’ve been used 3 years ago. Cause dated jokes put you in one of two categories. You’re either a) out of touch. Or b) giving us a dated screenplay. When an assassin with long blond hair attacks Todd late in the script, he screams the line, “F#%k you, Fabio! Get off me.” This is the definition of a joke that could’ve been used 20 years ago. With a little effort, you can come up with a more timely reference.
What I learned 2: Give your characters names that sound like their most dominant quality. You have your main antagonist here, who is the most VIOLENT of the assassin family. So what name does Hopper give her? “VIOLET.” Han Solo does his own thing. He operates independent of everyone else. Which is why his name is Han SOLO.
