[Interior: A dimly lit studio filled with canvases, sculptures, and half-burned candles. The smell of paint and smoke lingers in the air. Katniss Molotov pulls a cloth off a large canvas, revealing a fiery explosion of color—red, black, and gold colliding like a revolution frozen in time.]
Katniss Molotov: Well, Joe… here it is. My latest piece. I call it Ashes Before Dawn.
Joe Jukic: (steps closer, eyes narrowing) Looks like a city burning… but also rising. There’s something almost alive in it.
Katniss: That’s the point. Destruction and rebirth. Every empire falls, but the sparks always feed the next fire.
Joe: (smiles) That’s you all over, Katniss. Flames and fists. It feels like you’re painting a manifesto.
Katniss: Maybe I am. I want people to feel shaken when they see my work. To stop pretending life is safe, neat, or quiet.
Joe: (runs his hand along the edge of the canvas) It’s raw. Like it was painted with gunpowder and tears.
Katniss: (laughs) Close enough. There’s charcoal from a protest fire mixed in the paint. Real smoke, real rage.
Joe: Of course there is. You’re not the type to just buy paint off a shelf. You’ve got to make it bleed first.
Katniss: (locks eyes with him) And you—you’ve got to make sure people see it. You’ve got the words, Joe. I’ve got the fire. Together, maybe we can burn a hole through the silence.
Joe: (nods slowly, almost reverently) Then let’s do it. Let’s set the canvas on the world and see if it catches.
The set of Silver City Shadows was buzzing under the white-hot desert sun. Extras shuffled into position, grips adjusted cables, and the director barked last-minute orders. The male lead, Carter Vale, stood in costume—long coat, revolver on his hip—ready for the scene where he would face down the outlaw gang.
The assistant prop master hurried up with the weapon. “Here’s your piece,” he said, almost too casually.
Dean Fitzpatrick, a seasoned stunt coordinator with a reputation for smelling trouble before it happened, caught something off in the man’s eyes. As Carter spun the revolver in his hand, Dean’s gut screamed.
“Hold it!” Dean barked, striding forward. He snatched the revolver, flipped the chamber open—real bullets. Not blanks.
A frozen silence fell over the crew.
Before anyone could process, a battered RV rumbled into the lot. Out stepped Randy Quaid, wearing sunglasses, a beat-up leather jacket, and an expression like he’d just walked out of a conspiracy thriller.
“You see?” Randy said, jabbing a finger at Dean. “They’re here. The Star Wackers. Illuminati Satanic network. They’ve been taking out actors who know too much about the dark rituals running this town. Robin Williams, Heath Ledger… now they’re after Carter.”
Dean wasn’t the type to believe in wild Hollywood legends, but the loaded gun in his hand was proof enough that something was rotten.
That night, Dean called the only two people he trusted for this kind of work—Joe Jukic and his brother Bruno.
Joe was ex-special forces with a mind for strategy, Bruno a quiet giant with a bone-breaking grip. They’d handled cartel protection jobs, Balkan mob disputes, even one messy incident in Macau involving a corrupt casino boss.
Now, they were stepping into the weirdest mission yet—protecting movie stars from an occult network that thrived in the shadows of the entertainment industry.
The next morning, Joe and Bruno arrived on set. Joe scanned the crew with a soldier’s precision. Bruno checked every prop weapon, wardrobe piece, and lighting rig.
They weren’t just guarding the cast—they were hunting.
What they found was worse than Dean imagined: coded messages hidden in the script revisions, pentagram etchings in the soundstage walls, and one producer whose office was lined with photos of dead celebrities and handwritten dates in red ink.
It was a hit list.
Randy Quaid paced the lot like a prophet, whispering warnings about “blood moon contracts” and “ritual sacrifices under the Dolby Theatre.” Dean listened, realizing that maybe Randy wasn’t crazy—just the only one talking.
The plan was simple: keep Carter alive until wrap, smoke out the Star Wackers, and burn the network from the inside.
On the final day of shooting, the enemy made their move. A camera crane “malfunctioned,” swinging down toward Carter’s head. Joe tackled him out of the way while Bruno vaulted onto the crane operator, disarming him of a switchblade.
Dean caught sight of a figure slipping through the shadows—a woman in a black hooded cloak. He chased her into the back lot, where the night air stank of gasoline. She dropped a match toward a stack of film reels, but Dean lunged, knocking her flat.
When they pulled the hood back, it was the assistant prop master.
She hissed something in Latin before Bruno gagged her.
Randy just shook his head. “Told you. The Star Wackers never stop. But tonight… you stopped them.”
As the sun came up over the Hollywood Hills, Dean, Joe, Bruno, and Randy stood together in the quiet aftermath. They knew the network wasn’t gone—only wounded. But for now, the stars were safe.
And somewhere deep in the city, the Satanic occult force took note of the new names on their list.
LOGLINE: In the shadow of Italy’s most feared crime syndicate, a reformed Calabrian fixer teaches the dyslexic daughter of a mafia boss to read — only for her to become a legal secretary whose quiet brilliance helps bring down Italy’s most untouchable political and criminal figures, culminating in the arrest of Silvio Berlusconi.
ACT ONE — Blood and Letters
Opening Scene: Coastal Calabria, early 2000s. Giuseppe “Juco” Rossi (nicknamed Juco for short), a wiry, weathered man in his 40s, watches from a cliff as smugglers unload crates in the moonlight. He knows the operation inside out — he used to run it. But prison changed him. Now he works at a tiny public library, keeping his head down.
One day, a black Maserati pulls up. Out steps Rosanna Tyler, 19, half-Calabrian, half-English, the daughter of Antonio Tyler — a feared ’Ndrangheta capo. Rosanna has been pulled from school countless times due to “learning problems” and family scandals. Her father orders Juco to teach her to read, thinking literacy might help her with “legitimate” bookkeeping for the family.
Juco quickly realizes she has severe dyslexia. Instead of shaming her like others did, he uses colored overlays, gentle patience, and streetwise metaphors from mafia life to make the words click. Their lessons form a delicate friendship, one that balances on the edge of danger.
ACT TWO — Reading Between the Lies
Rosanna blossoms under Juco’s mentorship. She starts reading novels, legal codes, and eventually, court transcripts. Her father sees her as a sharper tool for the family; Juco sees her as a way to atone for his past.
During one lesson, Juco slips her a book banned by her father: an investigative journalist’s exposé on the ’Ndrangheta, detailing secret deals between mafia bosses, business tycoons, and Rome’s political elite. Rosanna is horrified to see her family’s name in its pages.
When her father is arrested in a minor sweep, Rosanna takes a job as a low-level clerk in a Naples law office. She discovers she can spot patterns others miss — hidden clauses, falsified contracts, laundering schemes — simply because she’s learned to look at documents differently from years of struggling with words.
Quietly, she begins passing information to a small anti-mafia task force led by prosecutor Maria Lupo, who’s been chasing a larger target: the Propaganda Due network, Italy’s most secret and dishonorable lodge of power brokers, which includes political kingmakers and even the sitting Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi.
ACT THREE — The Fall of the House
The danger escalates. Juco is nearly killed in a staged “road accident” meant as a warning. Rosanna’s own cousin betrays her identity to the family. But the prosecutor protects her under a witness-assistance program, moving her to Rome under a new name.
There, Rosanna decodes a labyrinth of offshore accounts linking ’Ndrangheta drug profits to construction kickbacks, TV media empires, and political bribery. Every breadcrumb points to the same man at the top.
Final Sequence: In a tense press conference, Maria Lupo announces arrest warrants. Police swarm a lavish villa in Sardinia. Cameras capture a defiant yet shaken Silvio Berlusconi being led away in handcuffs, denying everything.
Back in Calabria, Juco watches the footage on a dusty old TV in his library. Rosanna, now free from witness protection, visits him. She hands him a book — The Count of Monte Cristo — with a colored overlay still tucked inside.
Rosanna: “You taught me to read, Juco. Now I’m teaching Italy to see.”
They sit in silence as the waves crash below, knowing the war against corruption is far from over — but today, a giant has fallen.
TONE & STYLE: Think Gomorrah meets Spotlight — gritty realism mixed with political intrigue. Scenes alternate between rural Calabria’s olive groves and Rome’s marble corridors of power. The colored overlays become a visual motif — flashes of green, blue, yellow washing over documents and faces during key revelations.
THEMES:
Literacy as liberation and rebellion
The invisible power of women in dismantling organized crime
The tension between blood loyalty and moral courage
The slow grind of justice against entrenched corruption
ENDING FEEL: Bittersweet victory — justice is real, but it costs blood, exile, and the destruction of family ties.
