Original Screenplays
THE DARK HORSE CONFEDERATION
Greenlight Coverage score: 94th percentile, Strong Consider. Available for option.
Logline: A broke, idealistic hustler returns to Mississippi and forges a secret partnership with a dozen runaway slaves to build a thriving plantation from scratch, Dark Horse. Their enterprise quickly clashes with the region's dominant matriarch, who uses her "son", actually a lovelorn daughter trapped in a male role, to control the town. .
Genre(s): Drama, Southern Gothic, Social Satire, Historical Fiction, Romance, Revenge Thriller
This saga is morally complex and operatic, with themes around self-determination, racial injustice, identity, and the mythology of the American dream—all highly relevant to today's need for unity. The script is polished and complete.
This story debunks the traditional antebellum genre, propelled by gut-wrenching drama, a labyrinthine plot, forbidden romance, and darkly ironic humor, leading to a lump-in-the-throat finale.
Casting: challenging roles (all sympathetic anti-heroes and tragic anti-villains) for men and women, black and white:
* Durk Hurst: a visionary hustler, whose grandiose schemes often jeopardize his friends' lives
* Mrs. French: "a figure of Shakespearean monstrosity whose actions are rooted in survival logic within a patriarchal system" [Greenlight Coverage]
* Devereau: Mrs. French's daughter, "the loneliest person on Earth," forced to masquerade as a man, to live without lovers, friends, or children
* Big Josh: the moral compass and true architect of Dark Horse, initially a runaway slave
* Antoinette: a sophisticated, fugitive woman on a desperate quest to save her child, tortured by her own agonizingly sad past
* Isaac: an angry, skeptical maroon who because of past abuse distrusts whites
The script is based on The Lies That Bind, the first novel in Ed Protzel’s historical DarkHorse Trilogy. The rights for the sequels, including a 2021 America Fiction Awards finalist, are also available.
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
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.