Nurse the Hate: My New Hollywood Franchise Idea

 

I was speaking with my associate Robert Lanphier yesterday about the huge market potential of a series of novels we need to write this weekend.  The basic idea is rock solid.  They are about a crime solving pair of detectives named Pennington and Chadwick that spend 100% of their time solving crimes on “The Moors”.  While many will suggest that the modern world has little interest in tedious, yet predictable crime novels written in an 19^th Century style, I would suggest to you that these critics have little grasp of the potential of a “Pennington and Chadwick” franchise.  I see novels, then films, action figures, and a rock solid Hollywood franchise.  I think that this idea is a monster, and as such will result in financial independence beyond our wildest dreams.

For those of you somehow not well versed in “the moors”, Moorland, generally means uncultivated English hill land, but also includes low-lying wetlands such as Sedgemoor, home of the best meat pies on the whole damn island.  (I made that up.  I have no idea of the quality or lack thereof of a typical Sedgemoor meat pie.)  In every mention I have ever seen of The Moors in literature or film, terrible things happen to anyone that wanders out alone.  American Werewolf In London, the Moors Murders of children in the 1960s, or even the writing of Emily Bronte focus on the overall bleak aspect of the topography.  Not once has anyone ever said, “Let’s stay safe tonight and camp on The Moors!”.  I believe, as does my associate, both of us without any firsthand knowledge, that a night spent on the Moors will result in a 100% guarantee of either a hatchet to the head or being ripped apart by mythic beasts. 

It’s sort of like the woods in America in the 1980s.  All slasher films have taught us that any time spent alone in the woods can only result in being chased by a maniac.  Also, if one is foolish enough to attempt intercourse in the woods, that will result in certain grisly death.  As far as I know, all sex in the woods involving teenagers has ended in the male’s bloody corpse on top of the screaming female for one final look at her exposed breasts before her own gruesome death at the hand of a deranged murderer.  I can’t recall for certain, but I believe the entire homecoming court from my high school was chopped into bits near a lake on prom night, though admittedly that might have been a film I watched and have now confused with reality.  Regardless, the woods are America’s version of The Moors but with much less superstition.

The Moors is all about small villages set in bleak landscapes that have one pub where the skittish townspeople gather.  The pub must have a name like “The Bleeding Lamb” or “The One-Eyed Raven”.  The residents gather in the pub, sip pints, play darts, and patiently wait for a stranger to enter.  Even though this pub is the only open business in the little village, everyone in the pub is shocked when a traveler sets foot inside.  As soon as the traveler comes inside to an icy welcome, the townspeople will refuse to warn the traveler of the dangers of The Moors until pushed to the brink when the traveler announces something like “Think I’ll grab a picnic basket and have a nice snack out on the Moors!”.  At this point the eldest patron of the pub will angrily shout a warning.  “You go out to The Moors, what’s left of ye will come back in a box!”  This will be the setting of every single Pennington and Chadwick novel.     

The Pennington and Chadwick books will be wildly successful, likely much more successful than the Harry Potter series, because we will tap into this primal fear of the moors.  The real joy will be from the predictability.  Like a Scooby Doo mystery, each lengthy novel will set up a terrible crime seeped in savage intrigue.  “My God Pennington!  Have you read the papers?  There has been murder!  A man has been torn limb from limb in The Moors not a half day’s walk from Thornton-le-Dale.”  Chadwick.  Fetch Timmons to ready the horses.  Only the Devil himself could have done such a deed.  To Thorton-le-Dale!  Let us make haste!

Of course, when Pennington and Chadwick get there, they discover that small creepy village pub where all future character interaction takes place.  It will be the same basic cast every time in the same exact setting.  We will just change out a detail or two.  There is a strong working-class woman that runs the pub.  There is a wise old retired man that seems to know all, but offers nothing but riddles to Pennington.  An angry laborer seems suspicious, but of course he is hiding a heart of gold.  A young teenage girl that helps in the kitchen promises a clue, but is horribly killed in The Moors right before her rendezvous with Pennington.  Chadwick gives his usual line.  “My God, what kind of monster could do such a thing?”  Pennington surveys the body, stares off in the distance and says what he always says.  “Not monster Chadwick.  Not monster… but a man!  What man could do such a thing?” 

The clues all lead nowhere.  When all seems lost, an old drunk will pull Pennington aside and offer up the tip that the local handyman was seen leaving the pub moments before the girl’s murder.  The local policeman tries to shut the drunk up.  This bungling yet confrontational constable will offer no help to our outsider detectives until the moment of truth in the final act.  All the principal parties find themselves on The Moors at night in the fog.  Chadwick holds the flickering lantern.  There is movement just out of reach from the glow of the light.  The Beast moves to attack our helpless heroes in the fog.  “Steady Chadwick!  Steady!” says the ever-cool Pennington.  In the moment of truth, the constable shoots The Beast.  Pennington moves in to study the corpse of this horrible creature.  Only then is it revealed that The Beast is nothing more than the handyman in an elaborate costume.  “Chadwick!  This was no beast from hell’s very depths!  This is a man!  The handyman in fact!”  Chadwick, stunned from his near death yet still speaks up.  “Pennington!  How did you know?”   For no apparent reason whatsoever, the woman at the pub appears and confesses to everything in detail, how she designed the costume and conceived a convoluted plan to swindle property from the prominent local widow.   The plan won’t make a lot of sense but we’ll hope that the reader is so confused by our prose that they won’t notice.  “Constable, lead this woman away!”  Pennington and Chadwick return to their comfortable London home to sip brandy and wrap up the case.

In an effort to appeal to today’s marketplace, we will “drop” all 12 volumes of the novels at once so The Kids can “binge” them.  Sure, there might be some hesitancy in providing my associate and I the $5 million advance to write 12 impenetrable novels written in a flowery antiquated style, each story being an almost exact duplicate of the last.  (Hey, how does this sound?  “Pennington, how did you know that The Goat Man was not a beast from Hades itself but only a chimney sweep?”  Yeah, that’s good enough.)  Yet, I am certain that someone right now at Warner Brothers or Disney is ready to green-light this franchise that is all but guaranteed to make Star Wars and Harry Potter look like fucking jokes.  The future of entertainment is here.  What is old has become new again.  Welcome back to laborious reading.  Welcome back to The Moors.