PICKET CHARLIE is an environmental action/thriller about a botanist turned US Forestry Ranger who must defend her island reserve of trees from brutal timber pirates in a near-future world ravaged by climate change.

SYNOPSIS:

Picket: a. A detached body of soldiers serving to guard an encampment. b. To enclose, fence, or fortify...

c. A last stand of defense.

In a near-future America ravaged by climate change - a decade after the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets melt - the great west coast forests all but destroyed, the gulf and great lakes states under water, the US Forestry Service is militarized with orders to grow and protect forests – and their carbon scrubbing trees - at all costs.

Picket Charlie is an island close to the deadly swamps of abandoned Chicago where one lone Ranger’s resolve is challenged when timber pirates invade the island.

Climate change has caused economic collapse. With no power grid and very little fossil fuels left, ruthless gangs of timber pirates profit off the black market sale of firewood to the FEMA camps. And winter is coming.

They stage a midnight raid on the Picket and kill all the rangers except Sam Walden. Isolated and outnumbered, Sam must defend and protect the young forest – including the last known grove of old growth Hemlock - trees with incredibly large and efficient carbon dioxide storage capacity - at all costs.

The timber pirates have superior firepower, but she knows the forest and the terrain intimately. With help from her dog and Billy Zhang, a mysterious stranger that washes up on shore, she uses her wits, science and the forest’s natural bio defenses to fight the pirates and protect the forest.

She takes Billy into custody, unsure of what to do with him. She doesn’t know if he can be trusted so she takes her with him to inspect the forest, not letting him out of her sight.

On this excursion, we see her maternal passion for the forest and discover she’s lost her husband and infant daughter to the floods. She teaches Billy how the trees communicate with each other, how they protect and defend themselves, and how they and humans are the only two species that have altered the planet’s climate.

He slowly gains her trust, but while they’re in the forest, Jackso Rumpt, the leader of ruthless timber pirates, leads another raid on the island. The pirates start clear-cutting the forest while Jackso sends a platoon of his best thugs into the woods to kill Sam.

The pirates clear-cut toward the grove of old growth Hemlock. She can’t let them get there.

Facing overwhelming odds, she eliminates the pirates using actual plant defenses as inspiration, until only Jackso Rumpt remains.

But Jackso captures Billy and uses him to lure Sam into a trap. In a climatic action sequence that includes a vertical – not horizontal- chase and fight scene among the towering Hemlock, Sam and Jackso fight to the death- the future of the Hemlock and the rest of the carbon scrubbing forest at stake.

The script is the result of the University of Wisconsin’s Institute For Discovery’s inaugural Science to Script program, promoting the sciences in entertainment. Michael Graf is an ISA “Top 25 Screenwriter To Watch In 2021.”

The screenplay has won a number of awards and honors including:

• Genre winner at the ISA Fast Track Fellowship
• Finalist at the Fresh Voices Action Screenplay competition
• Finalist for Spotlight Award for Best Lead Role Written For A Female Protagonist
• Finalist at the Hollywood Climate Summit’s Writing Climate Pitchfest at NBC/Universal Studios.
• It’s a Top 1% Screenplay on Coverfly’s The Red List.

I’d love to send you the script and deck and don’t forget to check out the pitch trailer:

PICKET CHARLIE