When he learns his wife is planning to kill him, a rich man invites her secret lovers to a dinner party, and offers them each a fortune to kill her first.
thedarkhorseSamurai
When he learns his wife is planning to kill him, a rich man invites her secret lovers to a dinner party, and offers them each a fortune to kill her first.
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An interesting idea, but suggest it needs vetting.
Like, how can her lovers be a “secret” — but he knows who they are so he can invite them to a dinner party?
I suggest narrowing the focus down to a triangulation of characters: the rich guy and his philandering wife and her lover.
Maybe something like:
After he learns his unfaithful wife intends to kill him, a wealthy man offers a million dollars to her lover to kill her first. (24 words0
Or mix it up: the wife offers to pay her lover to kill her husband — and then he counters with an equally lucrative reward for the lover to kill her.
Or they both have lovers and both offer their lovers a $1 million to kill the other spouse. Who will collect first?
Anyway, the premise can go down any one of several plot paths — which is a good sign.
This could be fun! What draws out the conflict though? Is it that the lovers are struggling whether they love her enough to keep her alive or whether to kill her and accept the money? Do they know about each other, because I would assume that they would be a lot more willing to kill her if once they did find out about the others
Personally, I think this logline has a very solid hook. The main thing I felt was lacking was “wife” and “rich man” seemed generic. I was thinking “cheating wife” or “adulterous wife”, but I think dpg’s “unfaithful” works better. If I were doing this as a short film, I’d definitely also take his advice to narrow it down to one lover, and the benefit of the wife trying to get her lovers to kill him help you avoid having throwaway characters. Having the lovers interact with the two sides gives you a lot more opportunity to show their personalities. The benefit of having more than one lover is that you can do different things with those personalities, and also contrast them. Maybe one prefers the woman and the other is bisexual and warms up to the man. Maybe one is a vet that actually is good at killing, and another one is a nerdy accountant.
Thanks for the replies everyone.
DPG – Agreed. I think I need to outline perhaps. The key thing with this concept is to do a contained thriller – something in the style of ROPE and SLEUTH.
After he learns his unfaithful wife intends to kill him, a wealthy man offers a million dollars to her lover to kill her first. – this could work. Thank you. It would certainly keep things simple for the logline as I think perhaps the other characters turning up later on – would be a twist. We’ll see.
Your suggestions are interesting because I did loglines for each character to figure out who was the more pivotal character. Certainly it’s the kind of thing filled with a lot of mystery and a lot of twists.
My pivotal character was one of the lovers who has literally stumbled into this mess with the husband, the boyfriend/lover, a hitman/lover. He’s new to the club. He’s a drifter who needs the money.
Scott Danzig – all very good ideas. Certainly – the characters need to be different and have different agendas. I did consider AGENDA as a working title (a bit too on the nose.) The woman/femme fatale is very much using all of them (that much I know.) I want it to be the kind of thriller where the power dynamic is always changing.
YaelEinstein – Lets see. The husband knows about the lovers. The pivotal character/our protagonist has walked into this spider’s web – he’s new to the club. The femme fatale is using all of them – whether with sex, money, love, etc. She oscillates between victim to predator and back again. The conflict here is over who to trust and who’s working with who.
I need to outline.
Thanks everyone.
Check out Les Diaboliques for an amazing movie touching on the same subject.
Solid idea for sure! Agree with DPG. There’s a few options but they’re all pretty strong so I’d stick with this one.