Hmmm.
- THE ITANI CHAIN. A female scientist has activated her teleporation device and vanished. A group of adventurers is hired to go after her. The "jump" fries their equipment -- except the teleporter -- so they have to "rough it" as they jump around the world trying to find her.
It reads more like a TV series than a movie, and even then it might be a bit close to Sliders or Quantum Leap
- CALAMITY JANE. A sexy female criminal, whose specialty is demolition, falls in love with the lawman trying to find her.
Big fat meh from me, though I suppose if done well enough. But how can she fall in love with someone who's trying to find her (implying that he hasn't found her, and therefore they've never met)?
- A techno-thriller featuring the secret-agent branch of the Swiss Guard, the military/police of the Vatican. (Already it sounds like "Angels and Demons")
Yes, I think the whole "Catholic church is an international conspiracy run from the Vatican" angle may be a little overbaked at the moment. Give it a decade or so.
- An amateur writer in Las Vegas emulates his hero - a best-selling author who's a known high-roller - and suddenly finds himself mistaken for that guy.
This could be interesting, though I think the casino people in Vegas know their regular high-rollers by sight, so unless he's also a doppelganger for the guy as well as also being a writer, some other mistaken-identity thing might be better.
- The origin of a superhero. In most superhero movies, we have to sit through the origin story. But if you tell it from his point of view, he doesn't KNOW he's going to end up with powers, so why should the audience? It will appear to be an ordinary sf/fantasy/technothriller until the climax, where the hero gets his powers.
I like this idea as a script. Perhaps the difficulty might be in pitching and marketing it (which may or may not be a factor in your thinking). Most superhero movies, we know he's going to get powers because hey - it's Spider-Man. The trouble is, there are so damn many comic-book superheroes out there that are already known, that inventing a new one (which you'd have to do to pull this off) will be difficult without just ending up looking like a rip-off. Secondly, there's the problem of expectations - what you're asking a studio to do is to greenlight a series of movies that completely changes its central premise at the end of the first film, changing from technothriller to superhero movie. The technothriller fans will hate the second film, while the superhero fans won't see it because they assume it'll be a technothriller like the first one...
- EARSHOT. The hero, travelling in a foreign country gets involved in a plot using a weapon that can deafen people. He spends most of the story either deaf, or in a place where he doesn't speak the language. This would nearly be a silent movie, with no onscreen dialogue.
I like this as a high concept, though it would probably be hard to write without ever coming across as "the only reason he doesn't speak here is because the writer has decided he's not going to speak in the movie".
High-concept, insane deadline, tricky to write ... I love it. This would be my bet.
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If you can fly a Sopwith Camel, you can fly anything.
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