Pitch Your Movie: Andrew’s “The Universal Laws”
Make sure to read, comment as well as vote using the star rating at the end of this post! This is simple courtesy if you expect your own pitch to be read! Here is Andrew Robinson’s “The Universal Laws”.
“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 realities. 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
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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. |
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Marion Cotillard | She will play the wife that Jack ends up losing. She’s sweet and elegant and dies in Jack’s arms. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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John Goodman | Pearce & Pitt’s superior officer who keeps telling them to stop harassing this man and to work on their actual open cases. |
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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 traveling 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?
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25 Comments
This is a good pitch. Interesting story. Would definitely wathc this at the theatre
Good cast and director, but a bit too overdone plotwise for me. You state that that doesn’t bother you, but my immediate reaction to just your logline was the new “Time Machine” mixed with that old TV show “Sliders.” And neither of those are considered masterpieces of entertainment.
It’s interesting, however, and I do love these kinds of stories (parallel universes, etc.). It sounds like it could be a really fun B movie. Not sure how Fincher would take it on, though. Doesn’t seem too far up his alley.
Sorry for all the negative! Like I said, I think it could be a fun B movie!
no prob man… just want honesty… I know I was going out there for the sake of going out there and I did that on purpose. Just hope that it works…
Who knows; maybe Fincher won’t listen to me and shoot a completely different film and then I’ll fire him and hire Michel Gondry
Ah Michael Gondry seem to be theorietical best choice but I have a hard time with all of his movies I think he overcomplicates them.
Great idea! I do think you can get more out of the second and third act if you give it some work and focus more on Jack instead of Guy and Michael. If you do that I believe it can be a strong contender for a studio to be produced.
Just look at Hot tub time machine! If this story is done right it could be the groundhog day or Multiplicity of this decade. Why didn’t you go with Harold Ramis as director btw? =)
Oh, didn’t read this comment…
Well to be completely honest I was working with about 4 diff possible stories/genres that I wanted to make and eventually I settled on this. More and more I think about it the project would probably be more bankable with a more proven comedy director. But I just thought fuck it and pitch this idea with Fincher in mind it would be a blast to see the responses.
I personally wouldn’t have gone for Ramis anyways; probabaly Michel Gondry, Judd Apatow, Ricky Gervais or Adam McKay.
I like the concept. I have always been a sucker for romantic sci-fis and this would definitely fit the bill. Now I have a question: Why would Jack look for 1930′s America to date Marion again? Wouldn’t there be a 20 year age difference? Another problem I saw is that Guy and Michael seem to be introduced quite late in the movie, violating basic story-telling fundamentals. This could be fixed if they had something to do in the story such as investigating the incident that killed Marion at the start of the movie.
Not sure this would work as a dark comedy though, maybe as a full-fledged romantic sci-fi?
I reacted to the age difference on Marion in the 30′s aswell! If its possible for that to occur it needs to be set up quite early in the film.
From the look of it the Elizabeth Banks character will be one of the more characters that can really take of in a good way!
The setup also reminds me of Journeyman (the Canceled TV-series).
I tend to agree on Guy and Michael in this case. Since they seem to drive a good deal of the end story, they should probaby show up no later than the very start of the second act.
From a movie watcher’s perspective, I’m not sure how many alternate universes I want to deal with before getting to the one he likes–unless this is done in a sort of rapid-fire montage. While it makes for good storytelling on the printed page, I’m not sure spending five minutes in an alternate universe that turns out to be a red herring (beyond a first one like this) does much for me as an audience member.
Guy & Michael are introduced in the second act, however the movie doesn’t take long to get there.
They definitely don’t get that much screen time, but they work for their supporting roles. They’re the antagonists as they’re always pushing Jack to not be as open as he’d like with Marion about himself for fear of being caught – since he’s had such problems while sifting around in other universes (which we see in a wonderful scene where he’s going through the learning curve of the machine – I would say the scene mimics the intrigue of the final chase scene in Being John Malkovich)
Ok , now that I’m around to read the comments lets see if I can explain it all.
This is about alternate universes not time travel. So since this other universe seems to mimic 1930s doesn’t mean that everyone is 20 years younger. Marion will still be roughly the same age she was in the original universe. She’s just a different job and available and slightly different but overall the same kind of individual that Jack loved from his home.
Ah…that makes more sense.
I was just about to ask if this is a time-travel story, so thanks for clarifying. Great cast you have here, Andrew, just having Guy Pearce and Marion Cottilard alone are enough to entice me.
Oh, Marion Cotillard. You are everyone’s favorite dead wife.
I do love the casting here–especially the shout out to Eva Marie Saint, who I dearly love.
When I scrolled down the potential cast list and saw Jonah Hill I literally laughed out loud. Ha! Great choice!
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.
I would absolutely let Jonah Hill do some improv in that scene. The setup is just perfect. It would be hilarious.
I would go full-on zany outrageous comedy with this concept, which I really like. For some reason I keep picturing Michael Cera and Jesse Eisenberg as the two cops. The comic possibilities of pairing those two together as they chase Jack through the film just seem endless.
I think there’s something to letting full on dramatic actors doing comedy… it seems so natural sometimes.
That’s true. For the dark comedy route, dramatic actors would certainly work better. Like for “American Beauty”, it absolutely would not have worked as well if it was say Jim Carey instead of Kevin Spacey.
Using alternative universe’s sounds like a intriguing idea, but it seems like a idea that would be difficult to make work. I’m not sure i would see this in theaters, but i could see myself renting it
This reminds me of a manga that I read long time ago, a manga that I didn’t quite like.Travels through universes for a woman really not my kind of movie.
Sorry to say this Andrew, but I don’t think I’m going to watch your movie unless it’s on cable.
Your description of the plot doesn’t read like a comedy at all. Where’s the humor in this story?
I like your concept. It has a quirky feel to it. I fear though, that you are trying to make this be too much at once. Trying to make it a comedy, sci-fi, romance, you begin to lose some identity. Its a little all over the board. I almost feel as though the idea is a bit ambitious for the silver screen. It might make a better concept for a television series. Obviously, you have intentions to make sequel/s, but I am not sure that this film alone has enough to make me care. I want more substance before moving along. Its almost as if it is a beginning, and alone it wouldn’t be that good without the other piece/s. You might get me hooked on for the sequel, but I am going to be pissed about it. With a little re-working, I feel as though, you could have a unique and interesting concept. You definitely have my interest, now I want to see how you are going to keep it, and keep me happy at the same time.
I like this one, the plot does seem a bit like something we’ve heard of but I’m thinking that’s the point and the idea of Jack and Lemmon (which is making my brain melt just to imagine them opposite each other) is inspired.
I would watch this movie. Marion Cottilard and Jack Lemon in a time traveling, sci-fi romance sounds like my kind of movie. You have some very good story elements and the possibility of sequels.
Great idea! I love this kind of story. Like Sliders with a heart. But poor Marion Cotillard gets to be the dead wife again.
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