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THE AMBER ADVENTURE
By Scott Libbey

GENRE: Thriller, Sci-fi
LOGLINE:

A gutsy group of time travelers recruits an extraordinary team of history’s best and brightest to help steal the legendary Amber Room from the Nazis before they can turn its incredible power against the world.

SYNOPSIS:

THE AMBER ADVENTURE

Tone & Style: Highly entertaining time travel thriller featuring an eclectic group of legendary heroes and historical greats brought together to help stop the Nazis from winning WWII. And while the tone is sly and amusing as famous characters from vastly different centuries forge endearing friendships and jell as a formidable team, there are many tense moments of life-threatening danger, terrifying mishaps, shocking revelations and breathtaking courage and bravery as obstacles mount and plans go awry.

The WWII mission impossible thrills of INDIANA JONES, WHERE EAGLES DARE and INGLORIOUS BASTARDS and smart period dramedies like THE THREE MUSKETEERS, THE HOLY GRAIL and THE GREAT combine in a rambunctious and highly cinematic romp through the pages of history climaxing in a breathtaking battle royale where history’s best pull out all the stops and show why they’re the greatest of all time.

Story Overview: Behold the magnificent Amber Room, the Eighth Wonder of the World built with over six tons of amber and a size befitting its grandeur. Installed at the Summer Palace of Catherine The Great in 1763, dismantled by the Nazis in 1941, reinstalled at Konigsberg Castle in Prussia and destroyed by bombing in 1945. Or so they say. Now 80 years later, the ruins of Atlantis have been found off the Baltic Coast and tests show the amber used to build the Amber Room came from Atlantis and is charged with incredible electromagnetic energy unlike the world has ever seen. Knowing how desperately Hitler wanted the Amber Room, it’s likely a replica was built at Konigsberg and the real room was sent to the impregnable mountain fortress Lake Toplitz where the Nazis hid vast amounts of gold and treasure and conducted secret weapons tests. An intrepid time travel team will be sent back to find the Amber Room and send it to the present before Hitler can use its incredible power to change the course of the war and make Germany invincible. But they’re going to need a lot of help. And it’s going to come from the most amazing places.

Main Characters:

Dr. Steven Turner: Former top surgeon and keen student of history who thinks he knows everything and often does, age 50. Roommates with Laramee at Yale, they’ve had their ups and downs due to his cautious, risk-averse and occasionally volatile nature. Survived a harrowing three year trip with Laramee to the Civil War, but his scheme to buy tons of Early Impressionist art before it became popular paid off big and now they’re worth billions.

Kip Laramee: Free-wheeling Indiana Jones-like adventurer who sees time travel as a game where anything goes, age 50. A born leader who inspires others and can talk his way in or out of any situation. Highly adaptable, makes friends easily, totally fearless and always with another trick up his sleeve. Kate’s husband, co-leader of the time travel team and the man every man wishes he could be.

Lady Kate Lyons: British aristocrat b.1832. Beautiful, classy and a woman ahead of her time, age 35. Met Laramee during the Civil War, married him and eagerly came along when he and Turner finally made it back to the present. Keenly intelligent with a remarkably intuitive soul and as comfortable in the past as she is in the present.

Becky Turner: Feisty, athletic Yale sophomore majoring in Art History and Turner’s daughter, age 19. Whip smart and crackling with teen energy, she’s taken to time travel like a duck to water. Skeptical at first about Matt joining the team, she soon develops a thing for him. Also has a thing for Marian and a thing for Lancelot. It’s complicated, but that’s the life of a college girl.

Matt Allison: Super smart and highly capable Harvard sophomore, age 19. Thrust back in time to 1941, he outwitted a team of Nazi spies and came to Dr. Straub’s attention as an asset. As Laramee puts the GOAT team together, Matt recruits the Knights of the Round Table with incredible flair and saves Lancelot’s life during the battle royale. Like Becky, he knows how to rock when the chips are down.

Dr. Peter Straub: Professorial Director of the top secret government time travel program called The Philadelphia Project, age 60. Taps Turner, Laramee, Kate and Becky to be the Project’s A-Team and develops head-spinning new gadgets and devices to enhance their experience and make their job easier. But when he gives them a mission, he trusts them completely and lets them do their thing.

Prologue: An asteroid streaks down and hits the Baltic Sea near the fabled island of Atlantis with the force of an atomic bomb. A tornadic inferno engulfs the city and the 1000 foot-tall Tree of Life blazes like torch as rivers of molten amber burst from its trunk like lava from a volcano. A 200-foot wall of water surges in swallowing everything in its path and as the Tree smashes down into the waves with its molten amber snapping and bubbling with electromagnetic energy, the sea glows golden red as Atlantis disappears beneath the waves forever.

Russia, 1941. Hundreds of soldiers lay dead outside Catherine The Great’s Summer Palace as a German mechanized battalion loads huge wall-sized panels wrapped in tarps into a long line of transport trucks.

Berlin. Hitler is delighted that the Amber Room has been captured. But instead of putting it on display as planned, he orders a replica be built and the real room sent to Lake Toplitz. When asked why, a mystical gleam enters his eyes. “To harness it’s power! Power that will change the world!”

SYNOPSIS:

We move to the present where Becky Turner attends a lecture on Vermeer’s “Girl With A Pearl Earring” and feels a strange spiritual connection. As Becky goes through a typical day at Yale, she recounts her trip to the Civil War where she and her father, Laramee and Kate saved Lincoln from an early assassination that would have changed history and how they acquired a ton of early Impressionist art that’s now made them rich. She’s heading up to their Gilded Age mansion on the Massachusetts coast for the weekend and is super excited that Dr. Straub is coming. “I hope he’s got another time trip for us ‘cause my game’s gotten a little rusty!”

Straub arrives at the mansion with Harvard sophomore Matt Allison, who did his own harrowing time trip back to 1941. Turner, Laramee and Kate welcome Matt warmly, but Becky’s a bit skeptical. But when Matt recounts his adventure, Becky realizes he’s got the right stuff. And besides, he’s really cute.

Straub gives the team special phones called tPods that can take them anywhere in time and change their clothes to adapt to any era, then outlines the Amber Room’s history and tells them to go back to Catherine’s Russia in 1763 to tag the room so it can be located and brought to the present. But there’s more to it than that. They’ve discovered the ruins of Atlantis and believe the amber used to build the Amber Room came from Atlantis and is charged with electromagnetic energy unlike the world has seen. He suspects Hitler and his occult scientists knew this when they secretly sent the room to Lake Toplitz in the Austrian Alps. Straub says the room is likely at Toplitz in 1945, and they need to find it and neutralize it before Hitler can weaponize its unimaginable powers, change the course of the war and make Germany invincible. Suddenly the mission takes on grave importance.

Dressed as Colonial Patriots, the team arrives in Russia and are welcomed by Catherine, who shows them the Amber Room in all its glory. During a reception, Turner and Laramee sneak back into the room to tag it and as Laramee measures its electromagnetic power with a spectrophotometer, the needle buries in the red. But Catherine's top military advisor Count Orlov catches them and Prime Minister Vorontzov, suspecting they’re Swedish spies, puts them under house arrest. As the team makes a daring escape pursued by Orlov’s cavalry, their tPods – overwhelmed by the Amber Room’s electromagnetic energy – scatter them across time.

Becky lands in Holland in 1665 dressed as a Dutch girl and poses for Vermeer as he paints “The Girl With A Pearl Earring,” then vanishes and lands again at Versailles in 1777 where she strolls through the gardens with Marie Antoinette and her ladies in waiting. Matt lands in Camelot in 528 A.D. dressed as a page, wins a challenge with some tricky fighting skills and becomes Lancelot’s Knight-Apprentice. Turner, dressed as a French Army Captain and gripping his doctor’s bag, lands in Egypt in 1797 where young General Napoleon Bonaparte is dying of malaria. Turner gives him a shot and some penicillin and when Napoleon recovers, he grants Turner any wish in return for saving his life. Kate lands in Victorian London in 1882 and in a heartbreaking reunion, visits her dying father, who she hadn’t seen since he was Britain’s ambassador to Lincoln’s White House during the Civil War.

Laramee lands at Lake Toplitz in 1945 looking like a WWII commando and sees a convoy of German trucks entering a mountain tunnel at the far end of the lake. And when he points the spectrophotometer at the site and the needle buries in the red, he knows he’s found the Amber Room. The Abbot at a nearby monastery welcomes him and over a glass of wine, tells Laramee about the secret tunnels connecting the monastery to the caverns that the Germans know nothing about. Laramee checks his tPod, smiles at everyone’s exciting locations and DMs them to come to Toplitz. Suddenly Becky’s avatar changes from Versailles 1777 to Paris 1793 and sends a flashing message: Reign of Terror!

Dressed as a dashing cavalier, Laramee gallops up to a tavern in 1635 Paris and in a tour de force performance, dazzles the hilarious Three Musketeers with tales of his own swashbuckling exploits and asks them to help him save a beautiful girl, which is right up their alley. The four gallop into 1793 Paris and in a thrilling rescue, save Becky from the guillotine with seconds to spare. Back at the tavern in 1635, Laramee invites them on another daring mission and as Becky dances around swigging a bottle of wine, it’s “One for all and all for one!”

The team reunites at the monastery filled with tales of their wild encounters but confused about why the tPods sent them scattered across time. Kate thinks the Amber Room has some kind of intuitive power that fulfilled their deepest desires: Becky to meet Vermeer and Marie Antoinette; Matt to meet the Knights; Turner to meet Napoleon and Kate to see her father again. As that sinks in, Laramee drops the other shoe. He’s found the Amber Room hidden deep inside a heavily guarded mountain fortress and it’s throwing off incredible energy. Everything Straub suspected is true. And with time running out, they’re going to need a lot of help to steal it from the Nazis.

Turner goes to Florence in 1503 and in a moving encounter, convinces Leonardo da Vinci to come to the future by showing him a picture of the finished Mona Lisa hanging in the Louvre and a self-portrait he drew in his final year of life. Matt goes back to Camelot and in a dramatic encounter, pulls out his tPod (“It’s like Merlin’s crystal ball – only better!”), shows them Lake Toplitz where the Holy Cup is hidden and persuades Arthur to send Lancelot, Galahad, Gawain and Percival with him.

An excited Laramee goes to Sherwood Forest in 1191 and in a thrilling encounter meets his lifelong heroes Robin Hood, Marian, Little John, Will Scarlet, Friar Tuck and the Merry Men and asks them to join him on the biggest heist yet – but not before learning there’s a lot more to their story than we ever knew.

Turner goes to Princeton in 1950 and in another moving encounter, asks Albert Einstein him to come back in time to help stop the Germans from developing a weapon that could win the war. Einstein wants nothing to do with the Nazis, but when Turner says da Vinci will be there, Einstein grabs his coat.

The Greatest Team in History gathers at the monastery and as friendships are formed and pranks are played by the Musketeers, Einstein and da Vinci take a balloon ride over Toplitz, where da Vinci draws an amazingly detailed map. But when he shows it to Turner and Laramee, they see three heavily armed Schnellboots docked at a naval station and realize “we’re gonna need some big guns.”

Turner goes to Austerlitz in 1804 and admits to Napoleon, now Emperor, that he’s from the future. “You were sent to save my life so I could fulfill my destiny!” Turner asks for his help to beat the Germans 150 years from now and Napoleon, remembering his promise, smugly accepts the challenge. Laramee goes to the Caribbean in 1717 and in a hilarious performance as the flamboyant Captain Kidd, entices Blackbeard and his cutthroat crew to join him in a pirate’s bargain, promising untold riches and all the gold they can carry, which is music to the pirates’ ears.

The full team assembles at the monastery and at a raucous banquet, Laramee assigns duties and the team gets to work. Marian cracks the whip and keeps things humming as the Abbot leads Matt, Robin, Lancelot and Einstein through the tunnels. Standing on a high ledge overlooking the caverns, they’re stunned to see scores of German soldiers manning a vast warehouse stretching hundreds of yards filled with a maze of stacked crates, stolen art and treasure dating back millennia, a 20 foot mountain of gold bars and the Amber Room, pulsing and throbbing with fantastic energy manned by a team of white-coated scientists next to a futuristic room that looks like a space ship.

D-Day arrives and the attack begins. Shrouded in mist, Blackbeard’s ship appears on the lake as a battalion of Napoleon’s gunners and 40 cannons appear on a mountain ridge. Turner and Kate, dressed as SS officers, hijack an approaching German staff car and as the car is waved inside, Little John and six Merry Men hidden in the forest kill the guards with a barrage of arrows and race in with Laramee.

A group of German officers are terrified when Turner and Kate alight from the car. Kate demands they shut down the Amber Room and when they hesitate, Kate shoots one with a Luger, Turner kills the rest with his Schmeisser and he cavern erupts in chaos. A radioman sends an urgent call for help and Turner kills him with another burst as Laramee, Little John and the Merry Men race up.

Robin, Marian, Becky, Tuck and the other six Merry Men fire flights of arrows from the ledge, each one hitting its mark as Matt and the Knights climb down on assault ladders and the Musketeers swing down on ropes and land like cats. Laramee grabs a motorcycle, Will Scarlet hops in the sidecar and as they roar off into the raging battle, several things happen.

As Galahad, Gawain and Percival struggle against six soldiers swinging heavy iron bars, the Musketeers dash in dancing and prancing like acrobats and quickly dispatch the Germans. Einstein, da Vinci, Marian and Becky climb down the ladders and take cover. As two Germans with Lugers creep up on the left and right and Robin fires a warning shot from the ledge, Marian and Becky spin back to back with their bows and kill the Germans, saving the men. As Lancelot and Matt creep through the maze in parallel corridors, Lancelot is trapped by a German with a Luger. But instead of fighting back, he spreads his arms, welcoming death. Suddenly Matt kills the German from behind and as Lancelot drops his head in despair, Matt stares in confusion, not knowing how desperately Lancelot wanted to die.

Outside, the sailors manning the Schnellboots stare in shock as the Queen Anne’s Revenge bursts through the mist flying the Jolly Roger and as they scramble fight back, the Revenge fires a devastating broadside destroying all three boots. Up on the ridge, Napoleon sees a troop truck, a halftrack and two Panzer tanks coming down the road. A ferocious firefight ensues and as the cannons and the tanks trade devastating salvos, the truck, the halftrack and the tanks erupt in flames as the gunners shout “Vive L’Empereur!”

The battle is won – but it’s far from over. The scientists tell Einstein, Turner and Laramee that the Amber Room has been turned into a nuclear reactor to make atomic bombs, and the futuristic room is a time machine so Hitler can go back to 1940, nuke London and Moscow and win the war before it starts. But they can’t turn the room off without causing a meltdown. All eyes turn to Einstein who, in a thrilling display of courage and finesse, works the control panel like a maestro and shuts the room down safely.

Suddenly the German Becky shot protecting Einstein and de Vinci staggers up gripping a Luger and as he fires, Matt jumps in front of Becky and is shot in the chest. Turner performs an emergency transfusion with Lancelot insisting they use his blood and as Matt stabilizes and Turner stitches the wound, da Vinci holds a piece of amber to Matt’s chest and the wound miraculously heals and the stitches vanish.

The entire team races through the cavern tagging the Amber Room and the priceless stolen art and treasure and as they do, the Knights find the Holy Cup tucked in a torchlit alcove, fulfilling Matt’s crazy promise. As the pirates lug chests of gold bars out of the cavern and onto their ship, Blackbeard and Laramee light a long fuse snaking up into the mountain above the cavern and a dozen kegs of gunpowder explode, bringing down hundreds of tons of rock and debris and sealing the entrance forever.

The team hosts a raucous party for history’s greats back at their mansion highlighted by the Athos, Porthos and Aramis naming Becky the Fourth Musketeer and Porthos giving her his sword, Lancelot knighting Matt and giving him his legendary broadsword and Napoleon signing the title page of his biography for Turner. All of this and much, much more before bidding history’s heroes a tearful good-bye as Dr. Straub sends them back to their own times.

At Thanksgiving dinner a month later, Straub reveals that tests on the Amber Room are providing startling clues to medical and energy breakthroughs in the years ahead as well as an “intuitive soul” that may unlock the secrets of the universe. As Becky and Matt frolic on the beach with their swords like legends of the past, Turner, Laramee and Kate hang da Vinci’s priceless map of Toplitz over the mantelpiece, knowing they’ve got the best job in the world.

"What a fantastic story! The mixture of modern and historical/fictional characters is brilliant, but the real joy lies in their amusing and often deeply poignant interplay across centuries of time and sensibility. A real winner here."

Commercial Appeal:

Thrilling Story:

Super high stakes with time running out at the end of WWII. Time travel to some of history’s greatest people and places. The destructionn of Atlantis and the powerful remnants left in its wake. The secrets hidden by the Nazis at Lake Toplitz. The power of teamwork and the love that binds us across time.

All-Star Cast:

History’s best and brightest seen in entirely new lights. Rogues and renegades, thinkers and artists, generals and pirates, swashbucklers and pranksters, outlaws and thieves, men of the forest and and men of God learning new tricks and showing their stuff. The young and the old, the famous and the infamous stepping up to the challenge and delighting and surprising us at every turn.

Cinematic Visuals:

Breathtaking battles, stunning locations, sweeping vistas, mag-nificent costumes spannIng the centuries and wondrous revela-tions that bring history alive like never before. Lake Toplitz, an picturesque jewel cut deep in the Austrian Alps and the backdrop for much of the story.

Marketing Potential:

THE AMBER ADVENTURE is the sort of movie audiences crave. A dynamic and highly entertaining mix of famous historical and legendary characters brought to life like never before and its accurate and deeply compelling portrait of the Amber Room, often called "The Eighth Wonder of the World," whose capture by the Nazis in 1941 and its disappearance in 1945 remains one of the greatest and most intriguing mysteries of modern times. THE AMBER ADVENTURE is part of the Turner & Laramee film franchise which includes THE WAR BETWEEN (Civil War) and OFF WITH THEIR HEADS! (French Revolution).

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