Original Screenplays

THE DARK HORSE CONFEDERATION
Southern gothic drama

A pulse-quickening tale of survival in the antebellum South.

In 1865 Mississippi, a charlatan and a dozen fugitive slaves conspire to build their own plantation. But they expose long-buried secrets of the town's mad matriarch and her profoundly conflicted, tragic heir.

Available for option. Basis of the novel The Lies That Bind, the first in Ed Protzel’s DarkHorse Trilogy.

REMEMBERING PLANET EARTH
Futuristic political thriller

In the near future, the Earth has become a popular tourist destination for Alien civilizations. Two upper-echelon cultural tour guides serving advanced, wealthy Alien “Special Guests”—a disillusioned writer and the U.S. President’s idealistic daughter—uncover our planet’s truly unique main “native” attraction. 

Why would advanced Aliens vacation on backward little Earth? What uniquely man-made spectacular can’t they see anywhere else in the entire civilized universe? And why is it being kept so secret?

Available for option; novel in process.

In Process
THE ANTIQUITIES DEALER
Sci-fi Suspense Thriller

Log Line: A gallery owner, seduced by his former lover into a conspiracy to clone Jesus Christ, must outwit a gauntlet of fanatical religious masterminds. 

Pitch: A Hitchcock-esque everyman gets swept up in a Da Vinci Code-like quixotic quest. 

Blurb: In St. Louis, a risk-averse Jewish gallery owner is seduced by his enigmatic former lover into a quest to recover the last nail from the Crucifixion to clone Jesus Christ. Soon the couple are dodging a gauntlet of gruesome murders from St. Louis to Israel and back. Who among the Christian, Jewish and Muslim extremists is responsible? Can the pair locate the nail, escape the killer, and solve the murders? Will humankind’s future be changed forever? And can their love affair possibly endure?

Based on the novel by Ed Protzel.