Based on the hit play from the 2015 KC Fringe Festival, and now more relevant than ever.
Jesus on Toast
The proprietor of a failing small-town café fabricates a miracle to boost his business. That does the trick—but he’s forced to scramble when an investigator from the Vatican shows up. Just when it seems as if he’s gotten away with his fraud, a real miracle happens in the same diner.
Currently a feature film but it could easily be adapted and expanded into a multi-season sitcom.
Read the screenplay by emailing Mark@MarkGardiner.com
Also available for the stage.
The actor who plays Fred Rist, seen here in a 1939 publicity photo, will become the Steve McQueen of his generation
The trophy
Based on an amazing real-life ‘Great Escape’. Just as World War II began, a British Army motorcycle racing team was competing in Nazi-controlled Salzburg.
The team was poised to win the International Six Days Trial’s prestigious Huhnlein Trophy, and become world’s the top military racing team. They would have dealt a blow to a massive Nazi propaganda effort. But after five grueling days of competition, Hitler gave the order to invade Poland — an action that would draw Britain into a war with Germany in hours.
The team hopped back on their racing motorcycles, and escaped across the Alps into Switzerland, accompanied by the lone female competitor, Marjorie Cottle. What was she doing there, after all the other civilian competitors had left?
Currently a feature film but it could easily be adapted and expanded into a multi-season episodic drama.
Read the screenplay by emailing Mark@MarkGardiner.com
Set in an alternative near-future, a billionaire executive finds himself in fight to the death with his younger self after a cloning procedure goes wrong.
Not the monster you expect: Dersu the Bigfoot may have the body of Chewbacca, but he’s got the mind of Yoda
Shadowbox
This sci-fi series is a cross between ‘Looper’ and ‘The Fugitive’.
A billionaire executive and his wife take part in a still-experimental cloning program. They plan to re-emerge as younger versions of themselves, in a procedure that painlessly ‘devitalizes’ their older bodies.
A glitch in the process leaves the older man alive, and once he regains consciousness, he naturally decides he’d rather live. The younger clone shares his identity, and by law is obliged to kill the original ‘DNA donor’.
This is a classic ‘chase’ movie with a twist: The two principal characters each know everything the other person will do, because they’re not just identical people at different ages, they share one personality and one set of memories.
Read the pilot by emailing Mark@MarkGardiner.com
Lastsquatch
When the matriarch of the last Bigfoot clan dies giving birth, the creatures kidnap a woman who has just lost her own child to serve as a wet nurse. The ensuing manhunt ends with the deaths of most of the clan and capture of the infant – which is in turn snatched away by mysterious special operators.
Season One (c. 2025) With no reason to remain hidden, Dersu, the last adult Bigfoot, walks out of the forest. His appearance triggers a media frenzy and opens a new front in the battle between environmentalists and industry. Season One combines elements of Richard Powers’ novel ‘Overstory’ and James Cameron’s ‘Avatar’.
Season Two (c. 2030) Dersu searches fruitlessly for any trace of his lost infant sister, with storylines a la ‘Stranger Things’. He befriends a journalist who is allowed to share his deep insight into a lost Bigfoot culture, and the impending end of wilderness itself.
Season Three (c. 2040) In a dystopia reminiscent of Blade Runner, Dersu and the journalist struggle to find any last remnant of a wilderness that was once sacred to his species, and hold out the hope that his sister may yet reappear.
In development.