Targeted (movie idea)
I can’t write drama, on the page. I’m especially bad at dialogue. But a crazy synopsis I can do, and I have completed a script. If I can pull this off, it could be the most complex and topical script ever, while being fun.
The first ever digital marketing thriller! And ticks many topical boxes:
- Autistic heroes
- Data privacy
- The 1%
Autistic criminals hack the FaceBook database and use it to determine who are good burglary targets:
- job type
- car makes they like (sports cars)
- overseas holidays
- vote conservative
- own lap dogs
- have gym memberships they don’t use
- watch The Crown
And then when said people are posting selfies from overseas, they burgle them. But it turns out there isn’t much to steal these days, not like the jewellery and big screen TVs of the past. Flashback to them hefting a heavy telly.
Then, taking it a few steps further, they start kidnapping the family members. There are moral dilemmas involved, including whether they should steal from them and kidnap.
Baz, a digital marketing expert, seeing the news reports, figures there is a pattern, and figures they are getting data from FaceBook. Because he is autistic, he see the patterns in things. And he is especially good at seeing patterns of behaviour from people who are good at patterns. He likes fractals. And he lives online, because that levels the playing field for him. Real world, not so good.
He then (with the help of someone who could be a side plot), hacks FaceBook, applies the same criteria, and makes a shortlist of the next target.
MEANWHILE
One of the victims is also a crime boss, who spots some clues and hunts down the criminals
MEANWHILE
Some other amateur sleuths create an online persona who the criminals are certain to target. They are vigilantes but not geeks.
COPS
In all three instances, the cops get involved and play the would be targets, in order to catch the criminals. They have to act as the sad rich stereotypes who are targeted (humour)
BUT
The crime boss has orchestrated the entire thing, and is paying the amateur sleuths, (and the cops??) and the criminals, to play their parts.
Why would he do that? Well, he is an artificial intelligence, who has time travelled back from the future.
And he pays them with the prospect of time travel (after proving he is from the future)
I’m not sure about the above. There needs to be an AI from the future, on a Terminator mission, but not necessarily the crime boss.
SUBPLOT
Luddites. They are ineffectual in general, but manage to interfere with this story. We get to see a presentation they make about the technological “progress” of the last 200 years. They may just win somehow…
SUBPLOT
Romance between a hacker and a Luddite. They are probably both gender fluid. And had only met online.
DEMOGRAPHICS
I forgot to say that the hackers are elderly. Elderly women. It is just a given, internal logic, that all hackers are.
CONCLUSION IS A MEXICAN STANDOFF
But digital. Everyone can screw everyone with the touch of a button, and they meet in a VR world.
The AI crime boss knows how the future will turn out, which he uses as leverage. But he wants to change one thing, and that is a some rich evil person dies during the kidnap or before the ransom is paid. An evil person who would use time travel for his own gains. And just happened to send Baz back in time, but Baz is unaware.
NO BAD GUYS
Everyone is on a righteous mission. Ultimately is becomes the “would I go back in time and kill Hitler?” That could be a fantasy subplot as well 🙂
But the Luddites accidentally cause everyone to have a happy resolution.
I might need to make some flow charts…