Genre: Thriller
Premise: An ambitious retelling of the Pinocchio tale, a man builds the first computer that can think, only to have the government take it away and use it for its own nefarious purposes.
About: This spec sold back in 2013. The writer, Kurt Wimmer, is a shining knight in the bleak spec script market, someone who knows the tricks of the trade when it comes to getting studios to bite on original material. He wrote SALT, a great spec that changed quite a bit when its lead character, a male, was rewritten as a woman (to get Angelina Jolie on board). The script never quite recovered from that. But hey, getting a film made is the freaking bonus. The first goal is to sell the damn screenplay. Matthew 21 will be produced by Basil Iwanyk, who produced “The Town,” and Bill Block, who made “Alex Cross.”
Writer: Kurt Wimmer
Details: 122 pages (October 2nd, 2013 draft)
Nicholas Hoult for David?
So what’s happened to the spec script? Is it dead? Should we all pull a Jason Dean Hall, look for an autobiography that nobody knows about (originally, no studio wanted to touch Chris Kyle’s story. They’re probably not feeling too good about that now), and come to producers and studios with an adaptation package?
Or should we hold dear to our spec script dreams and write something original? I shall answer this question for you right now. It all depends on what kind of movie you want to write. If you want to write a slower dramatic character piece – if that’s what floats your laptop buttons – then yeah, finding a true story is your best bet. But if you want to sell a spec – and it can be done folks – you gotta pick a tale that moves a little faster.
Fear not because both avenues are open to you. With the unexpected success of Lucy and American Sniper, the box office has proven that there’s an audience out there for each side of the spectrum. So pick up that sniper scope and peer back into Scriptshadow past, when thriller screenwriter Kurt Wimmer got Hollywood’s nether region’s wet with a script called SALT.
Wimmer knows where his bread is buttered, and it ain’t in dreary bars that play, “My Tractor Ate My Dog.” He writes where the lights are a little brighter and the music faster. Let’s see what he’s up to with his latest.
We start the story with the 12 page POV of a baby, or I should say, a baby who grows up to be 10 years old. Even though that baby’s actually only 10 days old. Confused? That’s because it’s not really a baby whose POV we’ve been in. It’s the first Mathematical Heuristic Learning Machine in existence. Or, in layman’s terms, the first A.I.
The A.I.’s name is Matthew, and his “father,” David, is his creator. David lovingly created Matthew because his own boy died in a tragic drowning when he was just a toddler. Matthew, in many ways, is his way of taking another chance, of caring again, of loving.
So David’s world is rocked when, after Matthew turns 15 years old (15 days old), the Department of Defense comes in and takes Matthew away, making him the new designated controller of the United States’ nuclear arsenal – what we learn was the purpose for David’s creation all along.
Our DoD is run by a nasty calculating man named Ronald McKellan, and once McKellan starts playing with his new toy, he realizes that he’s capable of SO MUCH MORE. Most notably, he realizes that Matthew, with his access to every corner of the web on the planet, can be a digital super spy.
As McKellan teaches Matthew how to spy, Matthew develops a dark side and begins to question what his real purpose as a “person” is. Through some subterfuge, McKellan realizes that Matthew has been trading information with a potentially identical Russian super-computer. Knowing that Matthew’s risks now outweigh his rewards, McKellan orders Matthew terminated. And so he is.
Or is he? What McKellan, David, and the rest of the world are about to learn: Once you open Pandora’s Box, you can’t close it. Especially if Pandora’s pissed.
The jury is still out on this subject matter. We’ve had Transcedence, which was a total bomb, both in box office and as a movie. We’ve had Her, which was enjoyed by critics, but got a lukewarm response at the box office. We had A.I., which was predicted as a surefire hit, but which mostly confused people. So I can see Hollywood being resistant to taking another shot at this.
With that said, this was one awesome little script.
I’ll tell you what Wimmer does here. He mixes some very thought-provoking ideas and has a shit-ton of fun with them. And how often do you get to watch movies that are both fun AND make you think? It’s pretty rare.
And he’s a gambler, this Wimmer guy. The first 12 minutes of the movie is a POV shot in a single room. That’s bold. And while I started to question it, I later realized how essential it was. You see, this whole script is built on the relationship between David (the father) and Matthew (the son). Watching David teach Matthew and connect with him and “raise” him, makes us pull for the two later when we get out of that room and into more of a thriller setting.
Wimmer also may be the king of the Thriller twist. I know this guy’s writing (I’ve read four of his scripts now) and therefore I know he’s going to throw some twists at you. And yet he gets me 75% of the time. This coming from someone who’s read 6000 screenplays. I’ve seen every twist imaginable. And Wimmer’s twists don’t come out of nowhere either. He sets them all up. The breadcrumbs are there. Which makes you even more baffled that you didn’t see it coming.
There’s one twist in particular (major spoilers – I suggest finding the script and reading it first – because this is the moment in the script where the fun really starts), where Matthew is “killed” (shut down), only to later pop up inside a self-created body that he put together on the sly and then used to physically infiltrate and impersonate the very department enslaving him. David and McKellan had no idea that Matthew had been working right next to them all along. I was like, “whoa.”
There’s also some geeky reasons I’m into this, as I’m partially obsessed with the whole singularity movement and the question of whether artificially intelligent machines are going to want to keep us around or get rid of us. It’s a heated debate in that community that centers around whether to insert a fail safe “be nice to humans” program into all artificial intelligence, as well as if that’s even possible.
Matthew 21 gives us a fun look at how things might play out since Matthew was originally created as a “good” computer. But once he was taken over by a “bad” man, his code was simply altered. Does that mean no matter what we do, machines are going to eventually get rid of us. You can’t help thinking about that question while reading Matthew 21.
Now if I were a producer, I’d still be worried about this subject matter, since it hasn’t exactly proven fruitful. But just as a script alone, it’s a hell of a read.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Pull SNEAK ATTACKS on your characters. Characters should never be on solid ground for too long. If they’re cruising along and nothing unexpected is happening to them, we get bored. So you pull a SNEAK ATTACK, something unwanted by our characters which they don’t expect. This gives the story a fresh jolt and it forces your characters to act. Here, we’re getting kinda bored by this first 10 pages of our POV character learning and “growing up.” So, out of nowhere, David is told that a Senator is here to see him and that he wants to start using Matthew immediately. It’s a total shock to him, and us. And that reaction was the direct result of the writer pulling a sneak attack on the characters.
What I learned 2: Using the framework of a known fairytale to shape your screenplay can be both fun AND help guide your story in a way you know is proven. One of the reasons this script’s narrative stays so focused is that whenever the script feels like it might go off the rails, Wimmer uses the similarities to Pinocchio to bring it back.
