Monday, March 31, 2014

Why I Should Write For Hollywood: Detective Beowulf (Outline)

      Ok, so almost all of these posts for Why I Should Write For Hollywood are bad ideas from high school, but this is one I created in grad school. And I think it could really work as a movie, just take out all the magic and supernatural elements. Whoa…put down the blade fanboy. Now I know most people think ‘mainstreaming’ something is removing the interesting parts, but hear me out.

I want to turn audible history’s first superman…

Into this.

      When in high school, I loved the Beowulf story. While at grad school I was always trying to write new ideas, but one of those wasn’t new at all; it was a retelling of the Beowulf story as if Beowulf was a celebrity detective, and altering the story to fit into a traditional 3 act structure so all 3 stories connected instead of being 3 separate stories.

      Now, here is the initial concept in one page from my old discontinued Microsoft Works file from 2004.

Detective Beowulf Concept

      A mighty celebrity detective (who has cameras follow him everywhere) is sent to stop the serial killer known as The Beast (Grendal). Beowulf boasts how easy it is for him to track anyone. The mayor holds a feast for him since the detective that has never lost a case is coming to help him. He tricks Grendal into attacking the mayor’s house, and rather than cuff him, finds Grendal’s arms too big for regular cuffs. Beowulf fights him and takes his arm, but The Beast gets away. Though he is not caught, they know Grendal will never return, but his mother does, and she brings a lawsuit against Detective Beowulf for the violence against her son.

      In the courtroom, it look like Grendal’s mother will win against the physical infliction that killed her boy, citing Beowulf used entrapment and didn’t attempt to arrest him and had intentions to kill her son. Later, Beowulf finds letters that show the mother actually taught her son how to kill, and finds a letter of The Beast, thanking her mother for traching him the thrill of killing others. Using this evidence, as well as a gun he found in her house that matched what Grendal had used to kill a few people on occasion. (However, Grendal wouldn’t use a gun, and what would the mother need it for, think so the gun can be the sword, or should the letters be the sword?) Grendal’s mother pounces at Beowulf and tries to cut him with a knife. Holding the evidence gun in his hand, it goes off and kills her.

      On the night of Beowulf’s retirement, the rising major crime kingpin has one of his front businesses robbed by a thief, and he declares war in the streets to find him. (This Kingpin also killed Beowulfs brother and was never brought to justice for it; thereby making an emotional investment in the story, and give Beuwolf some regret at not ever being able to take him down). Beowulf then leads a batch of new cops and detectives and trains them in crime prevention (some paid off by the kingpin which eventually leave or turn on him). He has a meeting with the kingpin at the beginning and is poisoned by him unknowingly. He kills the kingpin near the end of the story, but not before the kingpin tells him he poisoned him with a slow poison, that now takes effect. Now, many rival would be crime bosses will try to fill his position. With the death of their greatest officer, the city is left open for a giant crime wave/gang war.

      That is just the outline. I actually wrote the first chapter, as this was originally an idea for a book in my (I forgot) class, and I will put it up here when I am done with this blog series.

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