One million dollar spec sale!
Genre: Erotic Thriller
Premise: A beautiful trophy wife and her perfect husband attempt to buy a New York City condo but the deal is held up by a rather unusual request from the seller.
About: Million dollar spec sale. Fresh new 2024 Black List script. Over Asking is said to be bringing back the erotic thriller genre that was so popular for that 7 year period in the 90s. Screenwriter Caroline Dries works exclusively in the TV space, and is best known for writing on The Vampire Diaries. She also does a lot of CW comic book TV writing.
Writer: Caroline Dries
Details: 119 pages (!!)
ATJ for Christian?
I’m surprised Hollywood hasn’t pushed harder to bring the erotic thriller back. It is one of those genres that’s cheap to produce yet has the potential to make a ton of money. Because it’s so character-driven, you needed movie stars to play one of the leads. So that added a sizable chunk to the budget. But, otherwise, if you could come up with a good concept, create strong sexual chemistry between the leads, and had a clever plot, you’d be counting money.
Caroline seems to have recognized this and come to play, using Indecent Proposal as her template. Let’s see if it worked.
33 year old Margo Pretty is stunningly beautiful. She’s been handed all the breaks in life because she’s won the genetic lottery, including bagging her perfect money manager husband, Christian Pretty. The New York couple seemingly has it all.
But, inside, Margo struggles with self-worth. She wants to be more than a trophy wife but never went about doing anything about it. These days, she’s looking to get into the influencer space but all the companies she interviews with aren’t sure what to do with her. She’s too old to be young and hot yet too young to be the hot mom.
Margo and Christian have their eyes set on a 25 million dollar condo and, after going to take a look at it, meet the seller, a top New York attorney named Gillian Town (50). Gillian says she’ll sell them the condo for just 20 million bucks with one stipulation… that on the first night, Christian stays home and Gillian sleeps with Margo.
Margo is a hard no but Christian really wants that condo so he pitches Margo on going through with it. Margo’s disgusted by her husband but the more she looks into Gillian’s life, the more intrigued she gets, and eventually says she’ll do it.
So Margo shows up at the condo (spoilers coming), chats with Gillian for a while. Then Gillian tells Margo to head to the bedroom. She’ll be there in a second. Margo does. She waits. She waits more. She waits more and more and more. Until, finally, she realizes that Gillian isn’t coming. She falls asleep and the next morning finds a note. It says, “Enjoy the house. Wasn’t feeling it.”
Those words stick like cellophane to Margo. Her whole life she’s been told she’s beautiful and now, for the first time, she’s been rejected. After going back to her life with Christian, she can’t help but think about Gillian’s rejection. So she stalks Gillian online and finally goes to her office to confront her. She forces a kiss on Gillian but Gillian still rejects her.
Meanwhile, Christian gets involved in an insider trading scandal and begins to suspect that Gillian is involved. He also checks Margo’s internet history and sees that she’s been stalking Gillian. As this obsession continues, it becomes clear that Margo isn’t going to stop until she “gets” Gillian. But what Margo doesn’t realize is that she may be a pawn in a bigger game.
So, obviously, we have a gender-swap concept here. This is Indecent Proposal with a woman making the request rather than a man.
Female gender swap concepts became so big 10 years ago that they quickly fizzled out. But I have to admit this one feels fresh. It’s unexpected. And, no doubt, it’s the reason the script sold for so much money. You can see the poster. You can see the trailer. It’s going to work. If they cast it well, it will make a ton of money.
And they should be thrilled that the concept works so well. Because, outside of one banger creative choice, the execution is subpar.
That creative choice is when Gillian doesn’t sleep with Margo. We’re SO SURE that’s going to happen – the whole first part of the movie has been setting it up. So when the writer pulls the rug out from under us and has Gillian change her mind? We’re rattled to the core. We have no idea why she would do that and have to keep reading!
It creates an interesting narrative because it turns the reluctant Margo active. She’s so confused that someone would reject her that she must find out why. She must win Gillian over.
I found all of that to be fun.
But much like the original Indecent Proposal, because the story’s biggest moment happens so early, it’s impossible for the rest of the story to live up to that moment. As a result, every ten pages contains less energy than the previous ten pages.
Caroline tries to fight that off by creating this secondary plotline where Christian engages in insider trading. And that plot does bring more context to Gillian’s indecent proposal. But it’s messy enough that none of those later beats are satisfying.
In fact, for an erotic thriller, there’s very little eroticism. This is due to the plot which focuses more on Gillian’s sinister plan. That plan doesn’t have anything to do with sleeping with Margo. The two only sleep together one time. I guess you could make the argument that all that buildup makes for a great sex scene. But I felt short-changed. Imagine all the people showing up for a sexy thriller and get… a two minute sex scene late in the movie?
Also, the most interesting thing about this story is this beautiful woman being told no and not being able to handle it, going so far as to become obsessed with the woman who rejected her. However, despite me highlighting that obsession, it doesn’t last long enough. Margo becomes obsessed quickly, then a few scenes later confronts Gillian, and then she cools on Gillian for a while. I would’ve liked to explore that aspect of Margo’s character more – her facing the death of her beauty’s influence over others. It’s the most interesting thing about her character.
Elsewhere, the script either makes odd choices or bumbles sound ones. This whole thing where Margo is trying to be an influencer never works. Every influencer starts out by making videos. Why is Margo going to influencer meetings to create her persona before ever making a video? It shows someone completely out of touch with the influencer space. Even so, nothing about the influencer subplot works. It should’ve been ditched.
And then the insider trading storyline is so muddy that it destroys the big final twist built on top of it. Again, you get the sense that the author doesn’t even know how to use PayPal, much less communicate how insider trading works.
Despite that, the script has SOMETHING. It’s entertaining most of the way through. The Gillian denial gives it a turbo boost. And not knowing how the Margo-Gillian relationship is going to play out keeps us curious. So, I do think it’s worth reading. And I support the big sale. You can totally see this being a movie, which should be the end game of writing every script.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Sometimes, when we spend so much time setting something up, we become single-minded regarding the payoff. We pay it off in accordance with the setup. But Caroline shows us that we shouldn’t always be locked into our payoff. There is not only one way to do it. You can flip the script and go in the opposite direction, which is what happens here. Not only was that a strong choice in Over Asking. It saved the script.
