FILM/TV - SCIENCE FICTION - NEO-NOIR
A million minds have entered the CLOUD. Only one knows that a storm is coming.
CLOUD technology has swept Los Angeles' rich and willing into the Outland Corporation’s virtualparadise, entombing their minds in server towers known as Cypulchres . The CLOUD’s inventor has lived in exile for a decade; feared, defamed, and despised by his former colleagues and estranged family. When he learns that the technology he created now threatens his family as well as the millions synchronized to it, he must take action. With the help of a gang of radical hacktivists led by another disgruntled Outland employee, he attempts to reverse the curse he’s unleashed on humanity. Nothing is what it seems, especially in a world torn between realities.
Based on Guy Faux Books’ best-selling sci-fi book series, this dark and twisted cyberpunk thriller will take movie-goers on a journey through revolt and redemption, high-tech nightmares and low-life dreams.
"A sci-fi cautionary tale that shines a decidedly unflattering light on technology..." THE CALGARY HERALD
"From android strippers to technology addicts, Cypulchre is part cyberpunk thriller and part essential human storytelling in its depiction of a man's quest for redemption."
OPEN BOOK TORONTO
"MacKinnon has crafted a believable world in Cypulchre, a dystopian future where critical thought has given way to virtual pleasures and the wants of the rich are favoured over the needs of the poor." THE GAUNTLET “As a commentary in speculative fiction about our cyber-connected lives, with engaging plotting and many discomforting scenes, Cypulchre is a fine addition to the cyberpunk genre.”
SAN FRANCISCO BOOK REVIEW
DOCUMENTARY TV - LIFESTYLE - EDUCATIONAL
The only show that boldly indulges our shared morbid curiosity and risks dread with the hope of finding answers and solace.
A documentary series chiefly concerned with the question of what happens to the mind, the ego, and the soul after death, and searches for answers from key religious, scientific, political, and mystic figures throughout North America, as well as from individuals with well-formed or well-informed approaches and theories concerning death.
In each episode of Dying to Know, our host will meet with experts to discuss their various approaches and understandings of what happens to us when we die. Engaging with rabbis, priests, imams, monks, scientists, politicians, and virtually anyone with a well-formed or well-informed argument for what death means, our hosts will mine their understanding for hope, commonalities, and peace. In addition to asking about known unknowns, they will also investigate new technologies that promise to prolong life and destroy death, including anti-aging drugs, cryonics, and mind digitization.
This show is especially timely now, with an aging population in Canada, Europe, and in the United States; even more so with more and more people identifying as irreligious, agnostic, and atheist. The social and conceptual opiates that once calmed the population are wearing off, leaving many to fear the dark. Dying to Know brings people together over this universal question, and provides a multiplicity of possible answers that may provide viewers with some consolation, or perhaps even new questions…
FILM/TV - ALTERNATE HISTORY - DYSTOPIAN EPIC
In the pursuit of the truth behind the September 11, 2001 American attack on Canada, two reporters will become hunted revolutionaries.
A Canadian city is bombed by an American activist on September 11, 2001. International tensions boil over while special interests lobby for war. As the conflict culminates in a military occupation, the truth about the initial attack is suppressed both by the American government and by the insurgents themselves. Two investigators are swept into this chaos and forced to stop observing history and to start writing it...
Based on the novel called “genius ... unnerving ... exciting ... and frightening” by The National Post.
“This highly original, vivid and bizarre tale of terrorism, civil war and foreign military intervention in Canada will shock readers and haunt them long after they have put down this book."
Allan Gotlieb, Former Canadian Ambassador to the US
"The reader undertakes a voyage of startling discovery: a black metaphor for US actions in Iraq, of course, but also in Afghanistan. The book is meticulously researched and cleverly transposes, to the 49th parallel, events and quotes arising out of the Bush Administration.”
Michael Kergin, Former Canadian Ambassador to the US
TV - MEDICAL PROCEDURAL - PSYCHO-DRAMA
In a clinic run by psycho therapists, not all mind-games have winners…
Dr. Fuller runs a successful psychiatric clinic at Brooks General Hospital. He sees dozens of patients who depend on his tough-love and insight to get over their respective traumas, phobias, and illnesses. Elemental to Dr. Fuller’s efficacy: he suffers from a cerebral deformity resultant of a traumatic accident that has defined his worldview and left him a widower. As a happy consequence, he is able to draw odd and brilliant conclusions as well as unconventional associations, thereby helping his patients. The downside of his instability: he frequently (and unintentionally) mimics the behavior of his patients. Despite his disability, Fuller hopes to resolve his inner mental-turmoil while keeping his practice profitable.
Several other psychiatrists and psychologists operate in Dr. Fuller’s officer, some of whom cross the line in more ways than one, threatening the clinic’s well-being and viability. Sex scandals, illegal experimentation, and economic manipulation abound…
Escalating the madness in Fuller’s office: a run-in with the law leaves him on the hook with a judge who forces him to take on the criminally-insane alongside the other patients warming his chaise longue.
REALITY TV - MOCKUMENTARY - DARK COMEDY
Some restaurants need saving. Others are beyond redemption.
An Emeril Lagasse / Guy Fieri / John Quiñones –esque host, sometimes referred to as the Flavor Savior, travels to a bunch of fake but hilariously odd restaurants in dire straits that he tries to help salvage. The host is consistently drawn into the chaos of each respective restaurant and morally compromised as a result.
FEATURE FILM - POLITICAL THRILLER - ACTION
To hit her deadline, she invented a terrorist threat. Now the real terror is controlling the story.
NEWSREAL is a dark comedy, which explores today’s political carnival and tackles the soft divisions in American society concretized by and after the 2016 presidential election. Dealing with themes of racism, identity politics, and the unprecedented partisan hackery exhibited by the mainstream media, it packs a punch that free thinkers on the left and the right will love to see land.
To hit a deadline for her middle-of-the-road news blog, Sasha fabricates an incendiary video suggestive of home-grown terrorism. It immediately goes viral, forcing her into damage-control, evidently easier said than done. Having incited public panic and a federal response, as well as unwittingly exposing a grander conspiracy, Sasha realizes that fake news has real consequences.
The provocative and thrilling novelization can be found HERE.
FILM/TV - ADVENTURE - SOUVLAKI WESTERN
There will be killing till the score is paid.
With American cannons cooling and Spanish ships sinking behind him, Colonel Odussus Axman embarks north for his ranch in Ithaca, New York. There, his wife Penny and son Tom await his return. The Spanish-American War might be over, but it quickly becomes apparent that Odussus’ trials are only just beginning. He is, however, not alone in his suffering. While Odussus faces indescribable horrors on perilous Mexican badlands and in haunted swamps, Penny and Tom fight desperately to keep their ranch despite continual harassment and assault by oil prospectors and their rapacious cronies. What the beasts descending on the Axman family in this archetypal epic don’t realize is just what the righteous are capable of under pressure.
ODUSSUS OF NEW YORK is a fierce adaptation driven by the essentials of Homer’s epic, The Odyssey, as well as Virgil’s Aeneid, albeit re-contextualized and set at the tail end of the 19th Century. In addition to updating the aforementioned epics and interrogating themes of American conquest, manifest destiny, crony capitalism, and industrialized slaughter, what advances the series is the unique intersection of Native American and Western mythologies as a means of accounting for the unknown.
TV - SUPERNATURAL POLICE PROCEDURAL - DARK COMEDY
Death, where is thy sting operation?
Police officer Sam Forster gets shot while attempting to capture a serial murderer Edstone Black (a very powerful and well-connected man downtown). Forster dies, having not resolved this last murder and a dozen other murders (which will provide ammo for countless episodes). He finds himself in a purgatorial reality between ours and the afterlife along with the ghosts of victims and aggressors. The stakes are especially high, despite Sam having already died, on account of the fact that death for a dead person means the annihilation of his soul. Keen on passing on, Sam sets out to bring justice to the murderers and closure to the victims of cold cases.
Sam's former partner, partly responsible for his death on account of having missed the call for backup in Sam's trying hour, is a young man named Riggs who is not all too bright. He is, however, quite charming—if that’s your thing. He doesn’t have a great deal of mental activity, making him especially susceptible to Sam’s ghostly interference (possession). Using his former partner on occasion to navigate the physical world of the living, Sam Forster encounters an incredible psychic detective—a beautiful woman named Isabelle Florentine. Isabelle quickly learns the nature of Riggs' “episodes” and soon helps Sam with his phantasmal mission. It doesn't hurt that their shared success also serves to advance her career...
They earn their share of spiritual scars and enemies, while harrowing the afterlife. Edstone Black, the mafia kingpin in the city responsible for Sam's murder, has as his closest ally a powerful seer—a New Orleans voodoo doctor. Her name is Queen Midnight. Black and Midnight wage spiritual war on Sam, Isabelle, and Riggs as well as on the murder-victims in the hereafter—shades desperate for justice.
FEATURE FILM - ARAB WESTERN - ACTION - DRAMA
"God is good. But I'm not."
An ancient and moderate town in a country ravaged by Jihadist carnage and western intervention falls under extremist control. Every time its people resist, the more they suffer. A scarred man rides in from the east, seemingly indifferent to their sad state. Welcomed as another potential lost soul ready to lose even more for the occupying regime, he gets to know both the towns’ people and their oppressors. It quickly becomes evident, however, that he knows more about the extremists than he’s let on, and his visit to this beleaguered town is no accident.
TV - ANIMATED - COMEDY/MUSICAL
Welcome, you denizens of delirium...to the bizarre!
PM Pictures' premiere animated anthology series. Our world-weathered raconteur host Moses Johansen (an analog of the late great Orson Welles) takes us on a journey through the plethora of weird old tales he's collected from his travels to the farthest reaches of the globe! Featuring musical performances from PM Pictures' in-house band the PM Players, this TV series is sure to excite the senses and amaze the soul!
Our five minute proof of concept can be found HERE.
More information on the two-sheet HERE.
TV - DRAMA - SHAKESPEARE
Blood will have blood.
An anthology TV series comprised of timely and progressive Shakespeare adaptations. Each episode, a 44 minute Shakespeare adaptation, all with a unique spin; all with easily approachable language.
