PILOTS AND SPECIALS - 

SHORT SAMPLES - 

FIRE DRILL

a feature screenplay synopsis by

Mark Abel

abelmark@protonmail.com

619.459.6774

Contained Thriller - A broken crisis negotiator defies his own police force to protect high school students holding peer shooters hostage during a politically charged siege over gun control.

Lieutenant Preston Maynard has had it with thoughts and prayers. Turning to substance abuse after his failure to deescalate the last school shooting, the negotiator is useless for the new nightmare unfolding at nearby Rustica Falls High. Fortunately, the students prepared in advance with a secret response plan. They capture the attackers and barricade the school to demand lawmakers pass strict gun control legislation. Failure to do so, they contend, will result in the livestream execution of each shooter.

However, the plan goes sideways when a gunman dies in the initial attack and a guidance counselor escapes, arms himself, and accidentally shoots a student. Once the situation stabilizes, Maynard, who has been in contact with the stronghold, is blamed and dismissed. Although the students request him back, Maynard is already at a bar in a confrontation with an aggrieved father who lost his son in the first shooting. Between this encounter and the chief’s decision to combat the massive influx of armed citizens and terrified parents surrounding the scene with riot control, Maynard realizes the standoff presents his only chance for redemption. He overcomes his circumstances and gains access by gleefully driving a stolen ambulance into the main entrance barricade.

Despite the chief’s fury, Maynard convinces him to delay breaching until the state senate votes. The bill passes, but when the governor vows to veto it just as time runs out, the students stage a mock execution using the already deceased shooter. This triggers the tactical strike while the death of a rooftop student by sniper fire starts a riot. Thinking fast, Maynard exits the school and commandeers an armored vehicle outfitted with an LRAD (Long Range Acoustic Device). The LRAD’s excruciating sonic capabilities subdue the crowd and prime the successful student evacuation. As Maynard finally leaves the scene, he considers applying for the guidance counselor’s position.

In the end, it’s revealed that teachers originally prepared the students for an active shooter situation with clear backpacks, armor-plated binders, and buckets of rocks—their first indication that sometimes those charged with protecting you are those from whom you need protection.

ESCAPEGOAT

a feature screenplay synopsis by

Mark Abel

abelmark@protonmail.com

619.459.6774

Adventure/Thriller - Exiled after his entire audience perishes in a theater fire, a reckless escape artist can only reclaim his identity by wresting control of a legendary lost oasis from the power-mad sultan controlling its secrets.

During a farewell performance before the Old World Theater closes for reconstruction, world-famous but frequently cruel illusionist Felix Fleming survives in a water tank while his entire audience is killed by accidental pyrotechnic failures. Aware he’s easily capable of escaping custody, authorities send the magician to a military outpost in the middle of the Sahara.

When his convoy is attacked by Tuareg smugglers, a drone airstrike takes out everyone but Felix, stranding him there. Wandering the desert in search of rescue, death approaches as he confronts his dark past for the first time and decides to reject his own name for having abandoned his mother.

He finally collapses to the unusual sight of a beautiful woman, Chantelle, in the distance. She comes to his aid until gunfire from two patrolling guards scares her off. They find the escape artist and take him to recover at a mysterious secret oasis known as Zerzura.

Modern, luxurious, and strikingly vacant, Zerzura is controlled by a brash sultan who fears the lost soldier’s arrival and locks him away in a dungeon. There, he meets Azazel, a kindly older prisoner who lived in the oasis before the sultan took over and enslaved the peaceful Zerzurans to a crude gold mining operation. Worse, Azazel tells him their remote location precludes any hope of escape.

Felix breaks out of the dungeon to search for the woman who saved him, with a promise to return for Azazel. Locating her deep in the oasis wilds, Felix learns she once worked for the sultan, recruiting people from around the world to live “off-grid” at the oasis—unwittingly consigning them to the sultan’s clutches—until he scapegoated her in a false promise to the new miners.

While the circumstances rapidly deteriorate his callous exterior, Felix helps Chantelle dismantle the sultan and his mining operation, only to discover Azazel was the true sultan all along and his men have the oasis surrounded. He brutally kills Chantelle and maims Felix before welding him into a doorless cage and blaming him for the backbreaking reconstruction work the miners must endure.

Only when Felix finally accepts responsibility for his blame-casting behavior is he resurrected—returned to the theater he never left, the entire experience revealed as an elaborate illusion from which he emerges anew, changed, and begging forgiveness from his staff. Will they forgive him after years of torment? Perhaps. In the meantime, Felix departs the theater to search for his long lost mother.

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