WRITING / SCREENPLAYS

Screenplays

Horror, mystery, dark comedy, speculative fiction, and original genre work.

Available for option. These original feature, short, and series screenplays are available for option and production consideration. To request scripts, pitch materials, or discuss rights, contact Michael.

18 titles · Books ↗

Produced screenplays

Michael has written a number of produced screenplays, including The Once and Future Smash, Clickbait, Blood of the Tribades, Backwoods Blood Feud, Magnetic, and TEN, among others.

For available original feature, television, and short scripts, see the directory below.

SCREENPLAYS

FEATURE FILMS

Feature

Apostles

Feature screenplay · 96 pages · Religious horror · Slasher

In the days after Jesus’s crucifixion, the apostles are murdered in ways that foretell their eventual martyrdoms. As sightings of their risen teacher turn fear into religious certainty, the skeptical Thomas searches for a human explanation that could overturn everything the survivors believe.

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Jerusalem, in the days after the crucifixion. Jesus’s surviving followers are frightened, divided, and increasingly afraid that someone is hunting them. As rumors spread of a figure bearing their teacher’s wounds, Thomas resists the explanations offered by both believers and skeptics. He wants evidence, but each new death makes the search for answers more dangerous.

Feature

Blood Sisters

Feature screenplay · 105 pages · Vampire horror · Dark comedy

After her adoptive parents die, a grieving Ohio woman flies to Los Angeles to meet the twin she never knew, stakes her in self-defense, and is welcomed home by a family of vampires who think she's her sister.

A vampire story about identity, grief, and family.

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After losing her adoptive parents, Tessa Collins travels from Ohio to Los Angeles to meet Morgan, the identical twin she never knew she had. The reunion takes a violent turn when Tessa discovers her sister is a vampire. Mistaken for Morgan by the family she lives with, Tessa finds herself surrounded by complicated loyalties, unfamiliar rules, and the possibility of belonging somewhere new—if she can keep her identity secret.

Feature

Candy

Feature screenplay · 93 pages · 1960s neo-noir · Revenge thriller

In 1960 Arizona, a genderfluid rockabilly courier hunts the bikers blamed for a car bomb that killed two local boys, but a new lover and increasingly unreliable radio messages turn the revenge spree into a deadly trap.

Tagline: Green means go. Red means stop.

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Arizona, 1960. Candy is a flamboyant rockabilly courier whose deliveries arrive through coded radio messages. When a car bomb kills two boys who looked up to them, Candy sets out to find the person responsible. Local bikers, a new romance, and an increasingly tangled criminal underworld turn the search for revenge into a dangerous journey through Route 66 country.

Feature

Dance All Night, Die All Night

Feature screenplay · 92 pages · Music-driven horror · Supernatural thriller

At a conservative Christian college in 1986, a sheltered freshman discovers that the summer's biggest pop song is conditioning listeners into perfect obedience, and when its charismatic singer prepares a nationwide broadcast, her lifelong inability to dance may be the one thing that can resist it.

An analog-era horror story about pop music, conformity, and resistance.

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In 1986, Miriam Christian arrives at a conservative college carrying a Bible, a Walkman, and a lifetime of warnings about dancing. An unexpected sorority assignment draws her into an unnerving campus scene just as an irresistible pop song takes hold of the student body. When its star prepares for a nationwide broadcast, Miriam begins to suspect that the music is doing more than making people dance.

Feature

May Their Memory Be a Blessing

Feature screenplay · 71 pages · Supernatural mystery · Drama

After a devastating car crash, a compulsive fixer struggles to make sense of his family's week of shiva as strained relationships, missing memories, and impossible events undermine everything he believes about that night.

A contained supernatural grief story set largely in one house during shiva.

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David Rosen has a plan for everything, even grief. After a devastating car crash, he finds himself at home amid the rituals of shiva, a household full of mourners, and relatives whose anger and silence he cannot explain. As fragments of the final night return, David struggles to make sense of what happened—and why the familiar rooms around him suddenly feel so strange.

Feature

Tell Them

Feature screenplay · 88 pages · Haunted-house horror · Mystery

A grieving couple's new home appears haunted by a drowned child. When they bring in a skeptical paranormal investigator, the search for an explanation threatens to expose secrets they hoped to leave behind.

A haunted-house mystery about grief, evidence, and the stories people tell themselves.

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Julia and Jonathan Reed move into a secluded house hoping for a fresh start after a painful loss. Instead, they hear tapping inside the walls, record what sounds like a child’s voice, and uncover a disturbing story about a drowning. A skeptical paranormal investigator promises to help them find an explanation, but the evidence proves harder to trust than either of them expects.

Feature

The Bat

Feature screenplay · 84 pages · Mystery · Thriller

When a caustic true-crime author moves into a jailed serial killer's desert house to write the definitive book, a copycat murder traps her among suspects, cops, and a crowd of costumed fans, and she has to solve it the only way she knows how: by reading people's words.

A contemporary adaptation of the public-domain stage play by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood.

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True-crime author Rachel Innes moves into the desert house of an imprisoned serial killer to research her next book. Almost immediately, a new murder brings police, suspicious strangers, and the killer’s devoted fans to the property. With missing money, conflicting accounts, and a mask anyone could wear, Rachel must investigate a fresh mystery without repeating the mistake that once ruined an innocent man’s life.

Feature

The Unnaturals

Feature screenplay · 102 pages · Dystopian science fiction · Thriller

When a deviance-hunting officer learns his sick son’s life-saving treatment makes him a criminal, he and a Ministry auditor begin questioning a regime that calls persecution compassion—and hides the truth about the ruler who created it.

A dystopian science-fiction story involving confession, memory surveillance, and collective guilt.

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In a surveillance state where forbidden body modifications carry a death sentence, patrol officer Jehu discovers that the treatment keeping his son alive could condemn him. A Ministry memory auditor, an aging priest, and a man marked as an Unnatural face their own conflicts with the laws they have learned to obey. As their paths converge, the regime’s promise of compassionate order begins to unravel.

Feature

Three Will Leave Alive

Feature screenplay · 95 pages · Supernatural horror-comedy · Mystery

On the overnight drive to a high-stakes gig, a rising all-women rock band tunes into a long-dead DJ broadcasting tomorrow's disasters — including a report that only three of them will leave the stage alive. To change the future, the four friends must unravel the secret of a deadly fire that consumed the same venue thirty years earlier.

Tagline: Four take the stage. Three will leave alive.

Four bandmates hear a radio broadcast predicting tomorrow’s tragedy.

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On the way to a career-making show, the four women of rock band Cheap Advice pick up a radio broadcast that should not exist. Its host is a DJ who died thirty years ago, and he seems to know things that have not happened yet. Then he plays their unreleased song and warns that only three band members will survive the concert. The friends must decide what to do with a future they can hear but cannot understand.

Feature

The Mohel

Feature screenplay · 109 pages · Horror · Mystery · Dark comedy

When an elderly mohel is accused of a series of brutal nighttime attacks, his rabbi son must investigate the evidence as a viral true-crime podcast revives an ancient antisemitic blood libel.

Tagline: The oldest lie has a new platform.

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For decades, Sholom Levy has served his congregation as a mohel, though his strong opinions sometimes put him at odds with his rabbi son. When a young man is attacked in his sleep, disturbing ritual imagery and a familiar recorded blessing put Sholom under suspicion. A true-crime podcast turns the accusation into a national spectacle while the community struggles with fear, anger, and a history of antisemitic lies.

Feature

Ghost Cars

Feature screenplay · 92 pages · Found footage · Crime · Mystery

A homicide detective facing a disciplinary hearing investigates the roadside death of an impound-yard clerk and follows a trail of impossible mileage, missing records, and police-held vehicles that seem to move when no one is watching.

An evidentiary noir told through recorded interviews, dashcams, databases, and other records.

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Detective Mara Vey is facing a hearing that could end her career when an impound-yard worker is found dead beside an industrial road. The victim’s records show police-held cars accumulating mileage despite logs claiming they never moved. Working through bodycams, surveillance footage, interviews, and contradictory evidence, Mara follows a trail that threatens to reach further into her department than anyone wants her to look.

Feature

The Mice Will Play

Feature screenplay · 98 pages · Crime comedy · Mystery

Over one increasingly disastrous night in 1994 Los Angeles, a burned-out contract worker and his maddeningly capable new partner race through five bizarre assignments while a group of armed strangers hunts them for reasons neither understands.

A 1994 Los Angeles crime comedy about misdirection, strange jobs, and reluctant partnership.

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Los Angeles, 1994. Francis Asholé is a rule-bound contract worker whose already miserable night gets worse when he is assigned a fearless new partner, Frankie. Their five appointments send them across the city to increasingly peculiar clients, each with exacting instructions. Meanwhile, armed strangers seem convinced the pair is involved in something far more dangerous. The two partners must figure out why they are being followed before their last assignment goes disastrously wrong.

Feature

The Wedding Whirl

Feature screenplay · Romantic comedy · Family

A camera-hungry bride who hasn't danced since a junior-high humiliation secretly joins a reality show that will pay for her wedding — if she can learn a surprise dance, hide it from her family, and outlast the childhood nemesis who blackmails her way into the bridal party.

Tagline: Something old. Something new. Something on national television.

Adapted from the book by Rachel Eddey.

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Brooklyn, 2009. Becca Feldman loves the camera but has avoided dancing since a humiliating eighth-grade incident. When her father’s heart attack puts her dream wedding in financial jeopardy, a reality show offers to pay for the reception—provided she secretly prepares a surprise dance. Between rehearsals, wedding logistics, television producers, and the return of an old rival, Becca has to face the one thing she swore she would never do.

Adapted from the novel by Rachel Eddey. Explore Rachel’s book on Amazon ↗

Feature

The Caul

Feature screenplay · 88 pages · Folk horror · Occult horror

In a 1970s Italian cliffside village, a mother struggles to protect her silent, caul-born daughter as a blight spreads, a blood moon approaches, and the neighbors offering help seem to want something in return.

Tagline: The veil is not free.

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Santa Lucia, Italy, 1974. After six devastating losses, Donna Zanin has devoted herself to protecting Caterina, her seventh daughter, who was born inside her caul. Now thirteen, Caterina has never spoken and is slowly losing her sight. As a blight spreads through the village and a blood moon approaches, troubling events make Donna question the people she has always relied on to keep her daughter safe.

SCREENPLAYS

TELEVISION

TV Pilot

Chimera

Half-hour TV pilot · Supernatural horror · Science fiction

In 1987, a grieving teenager experiments with lucid dreaming to reach his dead twin sister, but every attempt draws him into a more dangerous nightmare—and makes him question what lies on the other side.

Tagline: In his dreams, she’s alive. And afraid of him.

Season one comprises seven completed episodes.

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In 1987, six months after his twin sister Lucy dies beneath a fallen willow, teenager Cary Spiegel becomes obsessed with an article about lucid dreaming. With help from new friends and a strange audio experiment, he begins searching for Lucy in his dreams. But she seems terrified of him, and each attempt to reach her leaves Cary less certain where dreams end and danger begins.

TV Pilot

The Once and Future Smash

Half-hour comedy TV pilot · Mockumentary · Showbiz satire

Two aging actors who each played the same forgotten slasher villain are court-ordered to tour the horror-convention circuit together, sharing one table, one sidekick and one shot at the role, while a court-appointed videographer records every humiliation.

Tagline: One monster. Two men. One table.

Season One: six episodes, all written.

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Mikey Smash got the credit for playing a forgotten movie monster. William Mouth finished the role but was left off the screen. Decades of lawsuits have made their rivalry almost as notorious as the slasher itself. Now a judge has ordered them to share a table, an assistant, and a documentary crew for six horror conventions while fans weigh in on which actor deserves the name Smash-Mouth.

TV Pilot

Blackthorne House

Vertical series screenplay · Supernatural horror · Vertical series

A guilt-ridden heiress enters a livestream horror competition under a false identity to discover what happened to her missing sister, only to find the show has been waiting for her and the house may be more dangerous than anything its producers staged.

SCREENPLAYS

SHORT FILMS

Short

Bristle

Short screenplay · 8 pages · Cosmic horror · Body horror

After 211 days without brushing his teeth, a terrified man must pick up the toothbrush again when something black takes root beneath his gums, even though every stroke opens an impossible slit in the bathroom wall.

Also available as an approximately 20-minute radio-play prose adaptation.

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For 211 days, a man has refused to brush his teeth. Every stroke of the toothbrush opens a black slit in his bathroom wall, and leaving it alone has seemed safer than finding out what lies beyond it. But his mouth is deteriorating, and something dark has begun growing beneath his gum. With the pain becoming unbearable, he must decide whether to pick up the brush again.