I’m developing a serialized historical conflict drama set in medieval Shirvan.
At the center stands a monumental Tower of Adam and Eve designed to symbolically unite the three Abrahamic traditions - Islam, Christianity, and Judaism - under one spiritual vision.
While a secret assassin network works to fracture the region through fear, sabotage, and ideological extremism.
Here’s the question:
Would today’s global audience embrace a prestige series built around spiritual reconciliation - or is ideological conflict the only thing that truly sells?
If you were developing this for a streamer, would you lean into:
– The assassin conspiracy?
– The geopolitical tension?
– The forbidden romance across religious lines?
– Or the civilizational experiment itself?
Curious how you would package it.
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Welcome to the community, Adnabod Calon. Trends and audience taste change a lot. They might embrace a prestige series built around spiritual reconciliation. If I was developing the series for a streamer, I'd lean into the assassin conspiracy. It sounds the most interesting.
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Maurice, thank you - I appreciate the welcome and the thoughtful response.
Interesting that you’d lean into the assassin conspiracy. In the novel, that thread functions almost as an ideological counterforce to a spiritual experiment unfolding in Shirvan. The tension between those two energies is what drives the story.
From an industry standpoint, I understand why the conspiracy angle has immediate traction. The question for me is how to balance commercial propulsion with philosophical depth without losing either.
I’ll check out the blog and Open House — thank you for pointing me there.
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You're welcome, Adnabod Calon. Keep us posted on your series. And you could post your pilot script on your profile. Producers search profiles for projects. That and networking are how I sold four short scripts to a producer. Click the gear symbol in the top right-hand corner and select “Edit profile” in the drop-down menu. Scroll down to “Loglines” and click “Add/edit loglines” to the right of “Loglines.” You can also post your script on your profile this way: www.stage32.com/loglines (near the top where it says “Add a Logline”)
See you at the Open House! And I'm a Stage 32 Lounge Moderator. If you ever have any questions about Stage 32, let me or another Lounge Moderator know. We have badges on our pictures.
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Go for it Adnabod Calon faith based films are actually quite lucrative and in demand. They tend to do well in the box office and on streaming. I also think there are a lot of people who would love to explore religious reconciliation. I myself as a Christian, often wonder, what if all the major religions found common ground and build a foundational union on that? What if politics is what caused the divide in the first place?
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Kevin, I appreciate the commercial angle - but I see this differently.
To me, there are only two forms of spirituality in history:
faith in ritual - and faith in the Omnipresent.
Not faith as institution. Not faith as identity.
But faith as recognition that consciousness itself points beyond material explanation.
I don’t believe atheists reject transcendence - they simply rename it: Nature, Cosmos, Absolute, Energy. The vocabulary shifts. The metaphysical intuition remains.
What happened in 12th-century Shirvan was radical. It wasn’t sectarian religion. It was an incubator - a controlled experiment in decentralizing spiritual authority. Instead of concentrating power in dogma, it allowed multiple traditions to search for the Divine within the human being.
That is why the assassin conspiracy matters dramatically. They represent ideological control. The Tower represents inner sovereignty.
This isn’t “faith-based” in the modern genre sense.
It’s civilizational philosophy wrapped in historical conflict.
The real question is not whether audiences want religion.
It’s whether they’re ready for a story about spiritual decentralization.
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Adnabod Calon wow, such an interesting and powerful concept. Thank you for taking on such an important story. History shows us that the turmoil and seemingly unprecedented events of today are merely repeats of history. Far too often art fails to identify the positive cycles, moments and events of history that provide hope and demonstrate that WE are capable of rising above any individual(s), abhorrent ideas or martial conflict. I am rooting for this story!!
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Darrell, What drew me to this story wasn’t nostalgia - it was danger.
Interfaith unity in the 12th century wasn’t an idealistic dream. It was a radical political act. It threatened power structures. It created enemies. It required courage that rivaled any battlefield.
We’ve seen countless films about wars of conquest. Far fewer about wars of ideas - and the cost of choosing coexistence over control.
What if the most explosive tension isn’t sword against sword - but vision against fear?
That’s the story I’m telling.
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Very interesting take Adnabod Calon
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If I wanted to develop this, I would give highest priority to what I think the audience can most easily understand. Which I think is the love story.