Reclaiming the Stone or Hadara Coverage

Title: Hadara Author: Cassidy Haynes Locale: Hadara and Ironglen – Fictional lands at war Date: February 9, 2020 Form: TV Pilot Screenplay (25 pg) Coverage: Jackson Abbot LOGLINE: A struggling civilization breaks a century-long stalemate with a neighboring tribe.

SYNOPSIS: We open in Ironglen, in a grand palace. We see the immaculate halls and portraits that line the marble rooms. As a woman tells us the stories of their land – the wars they’ve fought and the grudges they still hold. A bright plasma forcefield now separates the Ironglenites from the neighboring tribe, Hadara. RAQUEL is the woman telling our story, as she sits in her daughter’s bedroom and holds her in her lap. The daughter, ELIANA is only seven, but she knows she is destined for greater things.

FIFTEEN YEARS LATER – Troops sprint through the woods in an exercise. A troop falls, and two others take cover. One of the covered troops makes a brave but foolish attempt to circle back for the fallen teammate, but she is shot in the back – luckily with a training paintball. Our foolhardy warrior is Eliana, now in her young adult years.

Eliana returns to the Palace, where we meet MALACHI in his crown. Eliana is draped in regal gowns for this posting. She follows Malachi into the throne room to attend the meeting. In the room, the engineer BARTLETT, and another advisor, ORSON. Bartlett is here to discuss a revelation in technology which allows them to breech the Hadaran forcefield. The material can pierce concrete with silky ease, but no material is suitable to test it on other than the plasma forcefield itself. A suicide mission to say the least. Eliana recommends herself and her training partners, JASPER and AIDEN. Malachi is hesitant to send her, citing the death of her father as a reason not to join the fight, but Eliana only sees his honor as another reason to forge ahead.

Malachi defers to CAPTAIN RAY’s opinion – the training officer.

Captain Ray reluctantly agrees to let her continue the training process with Jasper and Aiden, and then he will consider letting them go on this dangerous mission. We follow the young trainees through their grueling tests – over rock walls, through mud pits, under barbed wire, through the woods. They get better and better. They work better together as a team and pull each other up.

They look ready. “as long as you stick together, you’ll succeed” – Cpt. Ray. At Eliana’s home, she talks to her mother about the mission. Raquel sees it as a suicide mission, and doesn’t believe anyone should go, let alone her own daughter. Eliana admits that she has already been training and is nearly ready to leave. Eliana packs her bag and leaves without Raquel’s blessing, it is her duty. Eliana, Jasper, and Aiden are prepared and ready to go. They discuss whether or not the drill will actually work, and Aiden admits he is hoping for a failed experiment.

Reigniting this war will change everything. The group takes off to the border and readies

themselves to test the drill. The arrive, power up, and begin. The drill creates a large BREECH in the wall.

The last sequence is yet to be written, but it will conclude with Eliana being stuck in the Hadaran’s grips while Jasper and Aiden are locked back out on the Ironglen side.

COMMENTS: This is an extremely successful pilot – expertly introducing us to a world slightly skewed from our own. The story is fresh, but with themes that are broad-reaching and characters that feel familiar.

The relationships between the characters is easily understood, and I am excited to learn more about them. The flashback at the beginning of our story serves well to introduce our hero in her youth, showing her sureness that she’s destined for more – it also introduces her father, who is then ripped away in the flash-forward with only vague comments about his death.

The only story note I have would be regarding Captain Ray. He seems to go too easily from ‘I’ll think about it’ to them going on the journey. The script might serve from one more scene between Ray and Eliana confirming that she has his blessing.