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BLUE MARBLE DOWN
By Scott Libbey

GENRE: Thriller, Sci-fi
LOGLINE:

As Greenland becomes ground zero in the battle against global warming, a brave team of patriots risks their lives to expose the genocidal plans of a fascist American President.

SYNOPSIS:

BLUE MARBLE DOWN

Tone & Style: High octane thriller fueled by Christian fascist terror and devastating climate change. And while the tone is dark and menacing, there are many bright moments of incredible courage and bravery that lift our spirits and give us hope.

The action-packed futuristic style of MISSION IMPOSSIBLE and GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY and the dystopian horror of THE HANDMAID'S TALE and THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE combine with the sly intrigue of THE DIPLOMAT and the interstellar humor and sweep of STAR WARS in a highly cinematic and thought-provoking film set in the turbulent near future where the fate of the world hangs by a thread.

The stakes are high, the battles are thrilling and the pace never lets up in this wildly unpredictable world filled with knife-edged tension, breathtaking action, gutsy heroics and three remarkable girls from a distant planet who travel through time to investigate Earth as a new home for their people only to find that Earth's disastrous future puts both civilizations in grave danger.

Story Overview: Global warming and climate change have devastated Earth. Billions have died and been displaced. Nations are in turmoil as widespread panic grips the planet. The superpowers have descended on Greenland grabbing all the ice they can as supertankers ship billions of tons and hostile militaries protect the convoys. Fascist America First (AF) rules with an iron fist and blames the crisis on everyone else. And as tensions rise, so does the threat of nuclear war. Time is running out as the world prays for a miracle.

Main Characters:

Amberlin Doyle - Fiery, flamboyant UN Secretary-General, age 55. Tough, savvy negotiator with a wicked brogue and a fondness for Irish whisky. A born leader with her fingers in many pies, but her Machiavellian habit of using close friends to get what she wants sometimes crosses the line and creates friction.

Sophie Strong - Doyle’s lively Special Assistant, age 25. Strong moral compass with a thirst for adventure. The strong female friendships she forms in Greenland speak to her her empathy and diplomatic skills but her loyalty to Doyle creates problems for her mother Sybil, Doyle’s best friend.

Adam Strong - Strong Inc.’s high tech Wonder Boy and creator of Harvey and Jinx, who jokingly call him “God,” age 27. Bravely and at very high risk, unlocks the secrets of the AF dossier and devises an ingenious way to reveal it the world.

Sybil Magnussen Nobel Peace Prize Winner and Prize for Literature for her book “Reaping The Whirlwind” Doyle’s best friend since their Oxford days, age 55. Overly protective of her children Sophie and Adam and husband Ken Strong, but comes to realize that her remarkable family must answer the call of duty, even if it puts them at risk.

Sgt. Mac McCloud - Tough, street-smart MP who becomes Sophie’s close friend and bodyguard, age 25. Torn between her loyalty to the Army and her hatred of AF, she jumps at Doyle’s offer to join the UN Peacekeepers in Greenland as a Captain.

Brita Larsen - Spiritually attuned Inuit protest leader, age 25. Wants the superpowers out of Greenland and forms a deep friendship with Sophie, Mac and Harvey. Familiar with her culture’s gods and legends, believes alien visitors came to Greenland hundreds of thousands of years ago and knows “the ice holds many secrets."

Ken Strong - Chairman of Strong Inc., the world’s leading high tech/AI giant, age 55. Takes a huge risk by agreeing to investigate the secret AF dossier, knowing that the slightest misstep will destroy the company and cost him and his family their lives.

Harvey - Sophie’s wise-cracking droid, created by Adam. His wicked sense of humor and “Dirty Harry” sneer always amuse, but his encyclopedic brain and advanced vision program decode where the ancient alien explorers came from.

Jinx - Adam’s soldierly droid-assistant. Works tirelessly to decode the AF dossier, sneak though the the masking technology shielding the sites in Arizona and Maine and track Beck down at his Master Race city of Valhalla.

Harold Beck - Secretive, mysterious President of the United States, age 65. Rose to fame as a Fox News host, changed the GOP to America First and became President-Dictator, now in his 4th term. The AF dossier reveals not only his horrific crimes, but also his body double-Doppelganger ruse and his secret Nazi dream city in Maine called Valhalla, where thousands of Hitler Youth are being groomed to lead America into an even darker, more fascist future.

Joseph Schneider - Slender, sharp-featured Vice President and ruthless head of AF’s propaganda machine, age 50. Never misses a chance to sow hatred and division with his fire breathing speeches and Nazi-esque programs of eugenics and mass extermination. Plans to poison the nation’s water supply to reduce the population by 40% to improve efficiency. Makes Beck look humane by comparison.

Amelia Ignacio-Mendez - Tough, seasoned House Democratic Minority Leader who bears the brunt of Beck and Schneider’s attacks, age 60. Asks Doyle’s help in decoding the AF dossier and agrees to lay low and do nothing to arouse suspicion. Plays an increasingly important role as the story evolves.

Alicia Ignacio-Mendez - Brash, hot-headed Congress-woman and target of AF attacks, age 30. Her reckless habit shooting her mouth off has led a rocky relationship with her Minority Leader Mom, but the two women grow much closer as the story evolves.

And from the planet Chimera:

Queen Gaia– In the distant Andromeda Galaxy, the ultra-advanced planet Chimera is being sucked into a black hole and will soon be extinct. Queen Gaia, a regal but distant mother, knows she can’t save her planet but is determined to save her people and gives her three wildly individualistic and often at-odds teenage daughters a daunting mission: retrace the voyage of the ancient explorers, find the legendary Blue Planet and see if it can be Chimera's new home. Val will be Captain, Luc will keep Val from doing anything stupid and Trix’s job is to keep her sisters from killing each other.

Val - The eldest, age 20. Cocky Han Solo Starfighter pilot quick to anger and slow to listen. Proud and aloof, often to a fault. Bored stiff by Chimera’s coma-like sterility and lack of men, Val’s thrilled to Captain the mission to find the Blue Planet and leave her doomed existence behind. Cool under fire with a flair for command, Val takes to the mission like a duck to water, eager to keep pushing forward into the unknown and take on any challenge that comes her way.

Luc - The second born, age 18. Brilliant astronomer-scientist chafing under Val’s Boss Bitch aura and eager to spread her wings. A walking encyclopedia of knowledge who’s frequently called “the smartest chick in the galaxy,” Luc’s instincts prove invaluable, whether it’s analyzing strange galactic phenomena or hidden evolutionary clues as they investigate Earth’s unique topography and cultural curiosities in their quest to understand the planet and its evolving civilization.

Trix - The youngest, age 16. A bubbly, high-spirited firecracker who’s up for anything and always ready to plunge in. Earth is one big amusement park to Trix and she can’t get enough, whether it’s Roman orgies or lusty Knights or burning up the disco dance floor or gorging on Big Macs and fries. Loves both her sisters and finds her calling as a global teen icon.

Six and Seven – Keenly intelligent and amusing human-like droids who keep the girls on their toes and help them achieve their impossible mission as they navigate through the galaxies and Earth’s challenging historical timeline.

SYNOPSIS

EPISODE 1

2040. Global warming and climate change have devastated the planet. Billions have died and been displaced. Temperatures routinely top 130°, food is scarce, water is scarcer and famine and mass migration have plunged the world into chaos. The few nations with land above the Arctic Circle have ice, but the rest of the world – Africa, Asia, Australia, India and the Mideast – are doomed. Greenland is the world’s last hope. It has the most ice, the most fresh water, the most arable land and above all, it’s accessible. The superpowers have descended on Greenland like vultures, harvesting as much ice as they can while making Greenland ground zero in the cutthroat battle for survival.

But it’s also a powder keg filled with troops, subs, drones and planes and as each nation vies for control. the threat of nuclear war is visceral. The US is the world’s pariah under America First (AF), which seized power years ago and turned the country into a Christian fundamentalist-white supremacist dictatorship led by President Harold Beck and his Goebbels-like VP Joseph Schneider. It’s a nightmare many saw coming, but the reality is far worse than anyone imagined. Amberlin Doyle, the fiery Secretary-General of the UN now headquartered in Ottawa, is trying to keep a lid on things and sends capable young assistant Sophie and her wisecracking droid Harvey to Greenland to be her eyes and ears.

Sophie meets Sgt. Mac McCloud, a tough, streetwise Black MP who becomes her friend and bodyguard, and Brita Larsen, a local Inuit peace activist who’s spiritually in tune with Greenland’s ancient gods and legends. Brita is certain an alien civilization came to Greenland hundreds of thousands of years ago and that the ice holds many secrets. Meanwhile, in Washington, young Congresswoman Alicia Ignacio-Mendez receives an anonymous dossier containing terrifying secrets about Beck and America First and takes it to her mother Amelia, the House Minority Leader, who knows the dossier will get them killed if they try to go public.

Amelia calls Doyle and asks for her help and Doyle calls Ken and his Wonder Boy son Adam at Strong, Inc. in California, knowing that if anyone can crack the dossier’s secrets, it’s them. Ken and Adam accept the dangerous challenge and Adam and his trusty droid Jinx get to work. Back in Greenland, ice mining and shipping proceed at a breakneck pace. Supertankers transport billions of tons to US and Euro ports as subs prowl, fighter jets joust and ice skimmers surveil. Suddenly in the far northeast quadrant known as No-Man’s Land, a huge chasm opens along the entire width of a towering butte glacier rising above the ice sheet – three times taller and five times wider than Devil’s Tower.

The sound is deafening as the ice that has stood for millennia violently gives way under the strain of global warming, revealing a massive 500ʹ x 700ʹ sculpture of three human-like explorers who came to Earth hundreds of thousands of years ago - along with a star map indicating their home.

The ice holds many secrets, as we're about to find out.

EPISODE 2

Using top secret satellite and computer technology, Adam and Jinx break through the dense layers of AF masking technology, send in a bumble bee-sized nano drone and find the remains of a massive AF death camp in the Arizona desert where half a million political prisoners were killed, as well as a vast hidden city in northern Maine called Valhalla that houses Beck’s secret breeding colony and a genetically-enhanced Nazi Youth Corps that will form the backbone of a new AF Master Race.

The implications are staggering. The world needs to know. But how to go public without signing their own death warrants? Suddenly Adam gets an brilliant idea.

Doyle flies to Greenland to check in on Sophie and Sybil flies in from Stockholm to meet her. The two most admired women in the world share a warm reunion, but when Doyle tells Sybil she’s using Ken and Adam to crack the secret AF dossier, Sybil explodes, accusing Doyle of co-opting her family to further her own dangerous agenda. Doyle fires back, reminding Sybil that as leaders, they have a responsibility to make tough choices, even at the risk of their families and loved ones. Their friendship reaches a breaking point, but Sybil knows Doyle is right. American First must be stopped. The two old friends make their peace and move forward in common cause.

Using highly-advanced AI voice and imaging and video from the Bumble drone, Adam and Jinx create a powerful Deep Fakes video and cut into the midday AF News, seamlessly replacing the live broadcast praising Beck and Schneider with a shocking expose of the Arizona death camp, the secret Valhalla complex in Maine and AF’s litany of crimes and future genocidal plans. Beck and Schneider are caught unaware, the nation explodes in chaos and AF soldiers storm into the news studio with guns blazing and kill everyone, not knowing that the broadcast was faked.

Doyle and Sybil have dinner with Sophie, Mac and Harvey and Doyle asks Mac to join the UN forces with a promotion to Captain, Suddenly Brita races in with urgent news that something big has happened up north. The team choppers up to the remote No-Man’s Land and is stunned to see the newly exposed butte monument of the ancient explorers who came to Earth long ago.

Brita falls to her knees overcome with emotion, realizing that the ancient legends of visitors from another planet who came to Greenland hundreds of thousands of years ago are true. As the rest of the team stares up at the towering monument in shock and wonder, Harvey’s AI brain and enhanced vision program quickly decode the star map chiseled into the rock below the explorer’s faces, a distant constellation known to astronomers for centuries: they came from the Andromeda Galaxy, 2.5 million light years from Earth.

EPISODE 3

Adam’s video upends AF and civil war explodes as Beck and Schneider hole up in Valhalla. Meanwhile, deep in the Andromeda Galaxy, brilliant young astronomer Luc tells her mother, Queen Gaia, and her skeptical sisters, Starfighter pilot Val and the fun-loving Trix, that Chimera is being sucked into a black hole and will soon be extinct. Desperate to save her civilization, Gaia sends the girls on an urgent mission to retrace the route of the ancient explorers, find the legendary Blue Planet and see if it can be their new home. Val will be Captain, Luc will keep Val from doing anything stupid and Trix will keep her sisters from killing each other. Accompanied by Six and Seven, the girls set off in a Starship that puts the Millennium Falcon to shame. But as the ship heads out on its epic interstellar journey, their mortal enemy The Kwan, whose planet also faces extinction, decide to follow.

EPISODE 4

Beck and Schneider are trapped in Valhalla as civil war rages. AF News is shut down. The SecDef and the Joint Chiefs order the military to ignore orders from Beck and Schneider, fearing they’ll launch a nuclear war. Meanwhile, the girls find the Blue Planet and land at the explorers’ monument in Greenland. But they’ve arrived 200,000 years in the past, long before the dawn of man, and the monument is covered in snowpack. As they spin the globe in hyperdrive to accelerate time and find civilization, their amazing earthly adventure begins.

EPISODE 5

The SecDef – the only person in the line of succession who’s not AF – assumes temporary command of the government, imposes martial law and arrests the cabinet and all radical AF members of Congress, including the Speaker and the Senate Pro Tem. The mutual defense pact with Canada is invoked and forces enter Maine to seal the border and capture Beck and Schneider. Meanwhile, the Hyperdriving girls finally find civilization, starting with the Roman Empire. They dive into the excitement of gladiators and orgies, but sense that civilization is just getting started. So they keep spinning the globe and moving through civilization’s timeline, making highly amusing stops at Camelot and the Renaissance.

EPISODE 6

US and Canadian forces bomb Valhalla and Beck and Schneider are killed. Care is taken to minimize casualties among the thousands of Hitler Youth, teachers and baby factories and deprogramming efforts are begun. The House removes the AF Speaker by majority vote and elects Minority Leader Amelia Ignacio-Mendez as Speaker. With Beck and Schneider both dead and the new Speaker first in the line of succession, Amelia is sworn in as President, ending the AF Reign of Terror. Meanwhile, the girls keep spinning the globe and advancing through civilization’s timeline, making amusing visits to the Enlightenment, the Battle of Culloden, the Roaring 20s and the Depression-era ‘30s, where the girls go full Bonnie & Clyde. But while hovering over the Battle of Britain, two Kwan starships suddenly attack. And in a warp-speed race around the moon and back down into the Grand Canyon, Val’s Top Gun fighter skills send the Kwan to hell and she tells her crew, “We’re gonna hold this fucking planet or die trying.”

EPISODE 7

The military and National Guard are brought in to help quell the violence and the civil war starts to ebb. But it’s far from over. President Amelia speaks to the nation, urging all Americans to join hands in common cause to put the long national nightmare behind them, work together to fight global warming and rebuild what’s left of the American Dream. Meanwhile, the girls keep working their way through Earth’s timeline, falling in love with the hippie ‘60s and the disco ‘70s and gorging on Big Macs, shakes and fries. But the drug-fueled ‘80s do them in. And after a terrifying incident as a South Beach bar, Six and Seven beam them back to the Starship and cleanse their Chimerian systems, resetting their tolerance levels so they can never drink or drug again.

EPISODE 8

Sober, wiser and humbled by their mistakes, the girls rededicate themselves to their mission, reach 2020 and learn that climate change is threatening the planet they've fallen in love with. They jump to the present (2040) and see the destruction firsthand, then jump to the future and are horrified that nuclear war has destroyed the planet, triggered by climate tensions that have sent the world over the edge.

The girls know they have to do something to save Earth and come up with a daring plan. Doyle gets a shocking text telling her things about the future no one could possibly know with instructions to meet in the remote northeast quadrant – the exact location of the towering monument that nobody in the world knows about and Doyle’s kept secret. The skeptical UN team choppers north and lands at the base of the butte sculpture, having no idea what to expect. Suddenly the Starship appears and lands nearby, shocking Doyle’s team to the depths to their souls. The moment we’ve been waiting for has finally arrived, and it doesn’t disappoint.

The girls explain who they are, where they’re from, who the figures on the monument are and what their mission is. Standing in the shadow of their ancient ancestors and knowing that failure is not an option, the girls rise to the occasion. Val shines as an engaging diplomat, Luc excels as a passionate planetary savior and Trix wows everyone with colorful tales of their epic intergalactic adventure. Doyle’s team is enthralled by the girls’ courage and they forge an unbreakable bond. But the mission isn’t over, The girls take Doyle’s team aboard the Starship and hyperdrive into the near future so they can see the cataclysmic destruction for themselves. Doyle knows she has to act, and in a very long distance call to Queen Gaia on Chimera, the two powerful women negotiate a deal for Chimera's help in controlling climate change in exchange for the world's nuclear disarmament.

In a riveting speech at the UN, Gaia wins the world over, offering a partnership that will save both civilizations. Gaia and her daughters share a touching reunion and the girls are feted as heroes. But the celebration won’t last long. As the Chimerian star fleet heads across the galaxies to their new home on Earth, the Kwan prepare to follow. The battle for Earth is about to begin.

Commercial Appeal:

Compelling Themes: The imminent threat of America First dictatorship; the existential threat of global warming and climate change: the threat of nuclear war driven by global tensions, lack of resources and hopelessness.

Female-Led Cast: Dynamic, inspiring women in lead roles; stunning bravery and courage as they work together to save two civilizations; the girls of Chimera, their thrilling journey and their heroic efforts to save Earth.

Cinematic Visuals: Breathtaking space travel, sweeping vistas, majestic landscapes and powerful scenes set throughout our history that will transport viewers into the worlds of the past as well as the future; iconic visuals that will live forever, like the monolith in 2001, the spaceship in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS and the Statue of Liberty in PLANET OF THE APES.

Marketing Potential:

BLUE MARBLE DOWN is the type of series global audiences crave. A high stakes, high tech thriller set in a dystopian near future where the most immediate and existential issues of our time ignite on the screen like never before. The imminent threat of fascist dictatorship. The equally imminent threat of global warming and climate change that could wipe us off the planet. The threat of nuclear war driven by global tensions, lack of resources and hopelessness. All set against the backdrop of three remarkable girls from a distant dying planet who may hold the key to our survival. Rarely has a series been more timely and topical, and the powerful emotional journeys contained within will strongly connect with viewers on a deeply personal level and hopefully change the world before it's too late.

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