I’m posting here where it all started.? Like others I prefer that revisions be made under the original posting for the sake of the continuity of the discussion thread.

I consider the most important element in a logline to be the story hook.? I define the story hook as an element that gets immediate attention, fires up the imagination, creates immediate interest in the script.? The hook can be an unusual character, an intriguing relationship, a novel situation, and exotic setting, an story world. Or a combination of “hookable” elements.

In this case, the logline has an unusual character, a novel situation and an exotic story world — potential ingredients for an effective hook.

But here’s the problem as I see it: the character is unusual, the situation novel, the story world? exotic to the point of being esoteric, incomprehensible.? “Jinn”, “hybrid child”, “the Egyptian Unification War”, “flowed mummification, “Earth Spirit, “Anubis, judge of the dead” — none of these terms have any meaning,? make any sense to a modern audience. And, of course, there’s no way you can define any one of them, let alone all of them, in a logline.

Consequently, there seems to be very little for an audience to hang their affective hat on, which is to say, get emotionally invested in.? Why should a viewing audience care whether or not the kid becomes a god — a god who has no meaning, makes no sense to them?? How can they relate that to anything in their own lives, their own experience, their own religious beliefs?? Which is to say, what is thematic and emotional bridge that span 5,000 years of history and connect an audience in the 21st century to the ancient Egypt in the 30th century BCE?

Have you thought about rendering this premise in the form of a graphic novel — to present viewers with images of that ancient world and mythical time.?? That was the strategy of a screenwriter I know.? He hired a graphic artists to render the fanciful story world of his script as a graphic novel.? He used the graphic novel to pitch the script.? And it worked.? As they say, one picture is worth a 1,000 words.? He sold the script for a handsome six figure sum.

fwiw