A while back I participated in Anomalous Materials‘ latest Hollywood Fantasty Draft. So to complete the process I have to take my cast that’s been hired and pitch a movie for you all to read/critique. So here I am making my pitch and I hope you enjoy.

“Universal Laws” by David Fincher

The Logline

In the 50s Jack and Marion are happy, but one day Marion passes away in a horrible car accident that happens only two blocks away from their home and Jack witnesses it all. Jack a couple years later meets Jonah, a young scientist, who’s just discovered a way to move through numerous alternate realties. Jack steals the machine and uses it to go to a different reality to try and find his wife again and fall in love once more.

What’s New?

I won’t be pretentious enough to call my idea original. Personally I find new approaches to trite stories just as intriguing as the most original idea you can find. I like the idea of bringing this diverse cast together and taking one of the most technically brilliant filmmakers of today to make a fun science-fiction film.

The movie is going to be a dark comedy with a hard R rating.

The Characters

	Jack Lemmon	At the height of his career he deviates from his usual roles to play a likeable man that lost a loved one. He’s funny, but after his tragedy he turns to alcohol and one day stumbles into the home of a man to be considered a crazy scientist.
	Marion Cotillard	She will play the wife that Jack ends up losing. She’s sweet and elegant and dies in Jack’s arms.
	Jonah Hill	He’s a crazed scientist. He wakes up the morning after having completed his work to find a hungover (still sleeping) Jack in his lab and divulges what he’s been working on to Jack.
	Jennifer Lawrence	She’s a single mom who happens to accidentally cause the incident that kills Marion. One of her children run out into the road and so she runs after her to save her. An oncoming driver swerves to miss the child and her mother only to then run directly into Marion who was walking home on the opposite side of the road. Her character is psychologically broken and tries to seek forgiveness.
	Eva Marie Saint & Ian McKellen	They are Marion’s parents. They try to reach out to Jack after the incident but know that it’s going to be a long hard battle with his own grief.
	Guy Pearce & Michael Pitt	are police in the universe that Jack ends up in the second act. They notice something odd about Jack and start to follow him.
	John Goodman	Pearce & Pitt’s superior officer who keeps telling them to stop harassing this man and to work on their actual open cases.
	Elizabeth Banks	she plays numerous versions of herself in different careers and different states of mind over all the universes that Jack ends up visiting.

The Plot

Act 1:

As mentioned above. We see Jack and Marion happy together in the 50s America suburbs. Soon after the incident occurs and Marion dies from the car accident. Jack turns to alcohol and even considers suicide at one point. He one night, after going on a horrible bender, literally stumbles into Jonah’s lab and falls asleep. After he awakes he is helped by Jonah and eventually Jonah tells him about the work he’s been doing. A couple nights later Jack steals the machine to go to a different universe to begin a search for his now dead wife.

Act 2:

We see Jack move from universe to universe to be disappointed by all the Marions he meets they are his wife physically but not the same woman he loves. All of these universes are different not only in structure but also in time and space.

Eventually he finds a universe which seems very similar to 30s America in Chicago. He starts to wander around and eventually finds his wife and starts to ‘date’ her all over again and is so pleased with how similar she is to ‘his’ Marion.

While in this alternate reality one night in a club Guy and Michael notice that there are two Jack’s. Curious, thinking that they’re twins, they approach them separately to find out they’re the same person (with key differences). This causes suspicion and Guy and Michael make this man their new passion project, to find out who he is and what’s going on.

Act 3:

Eventually Guy & Michael find out Jack’s secret after Jonah catches up to Jack and pleads him to return to his own place in the Universe. However in an altercation Jack is killed buy Guy and Jonah is forced to take him back to his own universe where he is left to try and explain what had happened. Jonah is taken to an insane asylum and the movie leaves us on a ‘To be Continued’ note with Guy & Michael travelling back to Jack’s original Universe.

Why I decided on this story?

I just asked for David Fincher to direct an adventure/romance/comedy where it takes a leaf out of the book of Back to the Future. Think about the possibilities? It’s so crazy it might just work..

The film will also play heavily on the rules of the world of travel between worlds. When you move from one world to the other you can’t take anything that doesn’t belong to that world (like The Terminator) excepting biological things, etc.

I just think the movie can be fun and an interesting project for a serious cast to take on.

So the final question to ask is: Would you watch my movie? Or would you rent it? Or would you wait till it’s on cable and you can’t find the remote to change the channel?