The Life & Death of Daniel Dee

THE

A STANDOFF PICTURES FILM

LIFE & DEATH OF DANIEL DEE A

EDY M O C K C A BL PER! A C E M I R C

DD W E R TT NDRE A M A N N BY E A T RY RIT

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D BY

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TE IREC

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PE O O H

P ITCH D ECK

L OGLINE In the wilds of west Wales, a life insurance salesman hires a mother & daughter team of fraudsters to help him fake his own death, only to discover that they kill all their clients.

B UDGET £2.1 million

G ENRE Black Comedy Crime Caper

T HEMES Death, Identity, Hope, Family Drama

S YNOPSIS Setting his sights on a new life in Bhutan (Forbes Magazine’s ‘Happiest Place on Earth’ 2017), life insurance salesman DANIEL DEE hires MOIRA and MARTHA BELVEDERE, an entrepreneurial mother/daughter combo with a 100% guaranteed success rate for clients who want to fake their own death.

Unbeknownst to Dan, Moira and Martha’s remarkable success rate is down to one thing – once the paperwork’s in place and the ink on the obituary has dried, they kill all their clients.

Just 24 hours into his new life after death and less than three days before he boards that plane to Bhutan, Dan accidentally foils Moira and Martha’s plan and realises he’s now embroiled in their deadly game.

Dan brokers himself an introduction to THE PEMBROKESHIRE DANGLER, a semi-mythical hitman philosopher who’ll take the pay-out from Dan if he can eliminate Moira and Martha, and after a cat-and-mouse chase from Pembrokeshire all the way to the world famous Elvis Festival in Porthcawl, the four end up in a bloody shootout on the beach before Dan escapes to Bhutan.

DANIEL DEE

Dan’s an expert haggler who doesn’t just sell life insurance policies, he sells people peace of mind – the knowledge your loved ones will be looked after when you’re gone. Insurance is reassurance after all, and that’s something the good-hearted Dan values as he’s never had it himself.

His parents ran out on him when he was a kid, and he’s now finally realised he’s got to get out of his dead-end job if he’s ever going to find happiness, and where better to find happiness than in Bhutan (Forbes Magazine’s Happiest Place on Earth 2017). He’s just got to fake his own death and claim the pay-out from his own life insurance policy first.

CHARACTER BREAKDOWN

He hires ‘The Belvederes’, a mother and daughter team of fraudsters to do it… only for them to try and kill him at the first opportunity. After all, no-one ever thinks someone who’s already dead could be the victim of murder.

While Dan’s okay with the odd bend of the rules in the insurance game, when it comes to contract killing and life on the run as he makes his way to Bhutan, he’s a real fish out of water. This long-term loner will have to learn to rely on others for the first time in his life.

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T S I L Y A PL Let Down Radiohead

Gimme Shelter Rolling Stones

Nowhere to Run Martha Reeves

The Gambler Kenny Rogers

The Vampyre of Time and Memory

Queens of the Stone Age

Crying in the Chapel Elvis Presley

Wild World Cat Stevens

God Bless The Grass Malvina Reynolds

Everybody’s Gotta Live Love

Down By The Bay Raffi

Love Letters Metronomy

ATTACHED: IWAN RHEON Game of Thrones, The Dirt, American Gods

MOIRA

Moira’s a contract killer-turned-fraudster-slash-serial-killer who makes her living by conning money from the slimeballs and sleazebags who pay her to fake their deaths, before executing them just after the ink on the obituary has dried. She rids society of scum and flawlessly covers her tracks.

But more than just an ice cold-hearted serial killer with nerves of steel, Moira’s a slightly overprotective mother who only wants the best for her daughter Martha. Moira’s made some mistakes in the past that she deeply regrets, and she’s trying to shield Martha from having to learn about life the hard way.

The kindly Dan isn’t their usual type of client, but Moira can’t turn him down. A shady figure from her past has reared his ugly head and is blackmailing her. If Moira doesn’t use Dan’s pay-out to pay off this con man, a long-kept secret will out and her relationship with her daughter could be destroyed forever.

T!

IS PLAYL

Hard Time Killing Floor Blues Skip James

Blue in Green Miles Davis

Sea of Love Phil Phillips

Kids in America Kim Wilde

She Brings the Rain CAN

Blue Monday New Order

Buffalo Stance Neneh Cherry Ultravox

Mama

Genesis

Queen of the Night Whitney Houston

Road to Nowhere Talking Heads

CHARACTER BREAKDOWN

Vienna

MARTHA

Ambitious, perceptive and with a keen sense of what’s right and wrong, Martha’s the daughter of Moira Belvedere, a serial killer who bumps off bad people and who’s keen for Martha to follow in her footsteps.

While Moira leads by example, Martha’s only just finished school and she’s working out her own way in the world. She’s trying to figure out if her moral compass is quite as twisted as her mother’s, and when the two of them are faced with executing poor Dan, something in Martha’s gut tells her this man just doesn’t deserve to die.

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T S I L Y PLA Runaway Bon Jovi

You Keep Me Hanging On Kim Wilde

Your Woman White Town

But Martha’s got to hang onto her mother’s coattails as they pursue Dan across Wales, her future seemingly destined to be in the family business.

brutal

The resourceful Martha, however, has got a secret business idea of her own, but how can she turn her back on family?

We Got The Beat

Olivia Rodrigo

Kids in America Kim Wilde

The Go-Go’s

Trouble’s Coming

CHARACTER BREAKDOWN

Royal Blood

Demons

Hayley Kiyoko

Remember (Walking in The Sand The Shangri-Las

Heartbreaker Pat Benatar

Run With Us GlitterWolf

THE DANGLER

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IST L Y A L P Seek & Destroy

Enigmatic and ruthless, the Pembrokeshire Dangler is a semi-mythical hitman philosopher who takes his name from the storm that hangs over the coast of Pembrokeshire while leaving the rest of country dry.

Some say he is ex-military, a member of the French special forces. Some believe he is a descendant of a French soldier defeated at The Battle of Fishguard (1797). Others think he was the inspiration for the film Leon.

Whatever the truth of his origins, the mysterious man with a French accent is the very best assassin in the West.

The Brazilian Genesis

Whole Lotta Rosie AC/DC

Could It Be Magic Barry Manilow

Little Boxes Pete Seeger

I Am... I Said Neil Diamond

Du hast

Rammstein

Oxygene, Pt 7

Jean Michel Jarre

Total Eclipse of the Heart Bonnie Tyler

CHARACTER BREAKDOWN

After Dan survives the Belvederes’ attempt on his life, he turns to the Dangler. He promises him the cash from his insurance policy if the Dangler can kill the Belvederes before the Belvederes kill Dan, and soon enough the deadliest gunman in the west (of Wales) is on the road tailing the women who are tailing Dan. One thing is certain: not everyone will make it out of Wales alive.

Metallica

DR BLACK

ATTACHED: NICK FROST Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, Fighting with My Family

Friendly General Practitioner by day, charismatic bingo caller by night, Doctor William ‘Billy’ Black has a heart of gold and a soft spot for anyone who finds themselves in trouble. He’s got a mild addiction to poppers and numerous connections to the criminal underworld, but he’s always the first person to turn to if you need a few kind words, a carefully considered diagnosis or a decidedly dodgy prescription. It was Dr Black who innocently introduced his patient Dan to Moira, unaware of what would happen once Dan did his deal with her, and he tries to make amends by connecting Dan to the Pembrokeshire Dangler. But in Moira’s search for Dan, she’s coming after the Doctor and he’s got nowhere to hide.

CHARACTER BREAKDOWN

BOBBY GOLIGHTLY

A lowlife con man who’s always convinced he’s the smartest person in the room (he isn’t), Bobby’s a total stranger to the truth. Born to blackmail and dedicated to doing people out of their hardearned cash, Bobby would pin a murder on his own mother if it meant he could skip a jail sentence and put a few quid in his own pocket. It’s Bobby who knows Moira’s secret and who’s blackmailing her, but he’s doing it to get himself out of debt to the Landers, the most notorious crime family on the Welsh coast. Bobby’s way out of his depth, but if he’s going to drown, he’s going to pull everyone under the waves with him.

L OCATIONS

C OMPARABLES

T ONE

A BOUT THE FILMMAKERS RYAN ANDREW HOOPER Director After making a number of shorts including BFI-funded AMBITION and LADY BIGFOOT for the BBC, Ryan shot his BIFA-longlisted debut feature THE TOLL, funded by Ffilm Cymru Wales and the BFI and released in 2021. Investing in Ryan’s talent, Ffilm Cymru have funded development of two more features to which Ryan is attached as director.

MATT REDD Writer Welsh screenwriter Matt Redd’s debut feature THE TOLL saw him longlisted for Best Debut Screenwriter by BIFA 2021. He has TV and film projects in development with Bad Wolf, Raw TV, Severn Screen, and Who’s On First among others, and has recently had an original TV pilot script commissioned by a premium SVOD.

KATHY SPEIRS Producer Kathy is based in Scotland and founded Indie production company Up Helly Aa in 2012. Feature Films produced since include multi-award winning UK/Irish Co-Production Moon Dogs (2016), Brexit thriller Concrete Plans (2020), and for TV, BBC Scotland scripted comedy First Footing (2022) and Pity Party (2019).

LAURA TAYLOR-WILLIAMS Producer Laura has over 15 years’ experience in international distribution. She has worked for global studios; NBCUniversal & Warner Bros in senior management positions developing market and content strategy of content portfolios with film budgets of £0.5£150m. Laura is now advising independent production companies how to finance and monetise their slate further.

MARK HOPKINS Producer Mark has produced features KIDS IN LOVE, directed by Chris Foggin and starring Will Poulter and Cara Delevingne, and Ryan Andrew Hooper’s THE TOLL. In 2022, he will produce Alice Lowe’s BFI-funded second feature TIMESTALKER for Western Edge Pictures, and has a number of projects in development.

D IRECTOR’S S TATEMENT The Life & Death of Daniel Dee, is at its core, a film about people trying to find happiness and all the confusing and self-defeating ways in which that happens.

I got my first break in the film industry when I won a pitching competition with the idea of a life insurance salesman who wanted to commit suicide. The germ of that idea has stayed with me ever since.

The notion that the sum of a person’s life can be totted up on a spreadsheet and given a monetary value seems so cold and detached but the act of taking insurance out on your own life, and paying for that privilege, is fundamentally an altruistic one - you do it, usually, to protect family, the people you love most in the world and to ease the impact of your death in some small way. And it gives you peace of mind, there’s an almost zen quality to it in that respect.

Daniel Dee spends his days selling that peace of mind to people who have what he doesn’t, a family. There is a void that he is desperately trying to fill and he thinks the answer lies in Bhutan. It’s his own El Dorado, a place where everyone is happy and content. This story is told as an ensemble piece between the four main leads, exploring the different ways bonds are forged, and how the life and ‘death’ of Daniel Dee has a profound impact upon their lives.

Thematically, a sense of place is one of the main drivers of the narrative. As a result, the aesthetic of the film is dictated by the idiosyncracies of those areas. Each location will have a specific colour palette, reflective of the area and will ground the elements of the story.

I want to make this story because the notion of a family dynamic and how it changes is a universal one. In essence, The Life & Death of Dan Dee is a elevated genre film with serial killer fraudsters, an enigmatic French hitman and a cartel that runs the secretive world of glitter. It’s a movie I would want to watch at the cinema and I can’t envisage a better reason to make one than that.

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C OLOUR P ALETTE

This is the filmmakers’ follow up to THE TOLL, the black comedy crime thriller which was Hooper’s feature directorial debut, shot on location in Wales and financed by Ffilm Cymru Wales, BFI, Great Point Media, Fields Park Media Partners and S4C. Sales are by Great Point Media.

THE TOLL stars MICHAEL SMILEY, ANNES ELWY, IWAN RHEON, PAUL KAYE, STEVE ORAM, GWYNETH KEYWORTH and JULIAN GLOVER. The filmmakers were longlisted for a BIFA breakthrough award following the film’s UK theatrical release

by Signature Entertainment. THE TOLL was released theatrically in Australia/NZ by Monster Pictures, bought for France by Family Films, and is distributed in the US by Samuel Goldwyn Films under the title TOLLBOOTH. In 2022, the film’s UK network TV premiere was broadcast on Film4.

Development of the screenplay for THE LIFE AND DEATH OF DANIEL DEE was funded by Ffilm Cymru Wales

CONTACT

Kathy Speirs kathy@upha.co.uk Laura Taylor-Williams taylorwilliamslaura@gmail.com

A STANDOFF PICTURES FILM