When a rogue government agency kills his wife and puts him on the run, a brilliant engineer uses AI to get justice and prevent a coup d'etat.
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SYNOPSIS:

Girl Friday was a No. 7 Best Seller on Amazon, 8/3/2021.

This story will challenge all of your preconceived ideas of artificial intelligence to the core. It’s at the bleeding edge of now, so close you can reach out and touch it.

Girl Friday is unique in that it is a total flip of the innocent human/heartless, evil AI trope.

Logline: When a rogue government agency kills his wife and puts him on the run, a brilliant engineer teams up with an artificially intelligent woman to get revenge and prevent a coup d'etat.

Genre: Grounded Sci-Fi / Action-Adventure Format: Feature Tone: Edgy

Comps: The Girl in the Spider’s Web, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Ghost in the Shell, Ex Machina.

Completed Screenplay: Runs 106 pages in Final Draft 13. Theme: Adapt, improvise, and overcome.

Budget: This whole story is set in the here and now. Kay Oz is the only sci-fi element, making this a very budget-friendly Sci-Fi movie to produce.

Characters:

Dr. Matthew Lockheart (30s): A brilliant engineer. Passion for his work makes him a workaholic. However, he is naïve and fails to see his cheating wife for what she is. He blames himself for her death and is determined to take vengeance upon Derek Sanders and the NSA agents who killed her. As Matt grieves and struggles to turn his genius to become the shadow warrior, he develops a special, loving relationship with Kay Oz.

Kay Oz(20s): Throw away all your preconceived ideas of artificial intelligence. Kay Oz is nothing you expect. Every bit of her is ‘woman’ with her own ideas as to who she is and who she wants to be. Struggling to survive Derek Sanders’ attempt to kill her, she finds Matt. With a common goal of revenge, they conspire to sabotage Derek Sanders’ invincible Ninja satellites. Kay Oz’s 3-D holographic image appears in scenes to visually express the emotion of the scene and to give the audience someone to really care about.

Laurie Jennings(20s): An industrial spy lured in by love, Laurie is caught up in the whirlwind when Matt must rescue her from NSA agents about to kill her. Her human failings only add to the challenges Matt and Kay Oz must overcome. She falls in love with Matt.

Mariah (late 20s): A brilliant young IT student working as an intern for the NSA. She has a good moral compass and the smarts to do the right thing in the worst of circumstances.

Derek Sanders(40s): The savvy Director of the NSA with ambitions to take over the whole US government. He is actually a ruthless mob boss obsessed with ruling the world. He believes his state-of-the-art, super-secret Ninja spy satellites make him invincible and will kill to protect his evil secrets.

Story Summary:

The story opens as the artificially intelligent program “Chaos” decides that she is female and renames herself Kay Oz. She is actually Mariah’s artificial intelligence University project intended to run the Top-Secret NSA electronic intel system. However, the evil and megalomaniacal NSA Director, Derek Sanders, becomes paranoid that a now intelligent Kay Oz (with her own sense of right and wrong) knows exactly who he is illegally surveilling. To protect his evil secrets, Derek Sanders orders Kay Oz destroyed, saying that she’s only a program, but Mariah knows better. Kay Oz is no longer a thing. She is a living being, a person.

Mariah bravely smuggles Kay Oz out of the NSA to secretly get her onto Dr. Matthew Lockheart’s computer. Matt, a highly skilled engineer, is in the process of being thrown out of the house by his disgruntled wife. Matt’s company is just finishing work on camera stabilizers for Derek Sanders’ Top-Secret Ninja satellites.

Derek Sanders is obsessed with killing off anyone who knows too much about his Ninja satellites. So, Derek Sanders’ agents come in the night to kill Matt, but Matt isn’t home. Instead, they kill Matt’s wife and her boyfriend by mistake, thinking that he is Matt.

Only the CIA (the good guys in this scenario) know that Matt is still alive. They help him hide at his brother’s house while the politics broiling around Derek Sanders’ plot to overthrow the government secretly unfolds in the background. Derek Sanders starts developing plans for a new shadow government called UMBRA.

Only after his wife is killed does Matt discover that Kay Oz is hiding in his home PC.

“I’m alone and afraid,” Kay Oz tells Matt.

Matt’s only choice is to risk everything to go rescue her. Kay Oz sees that as an act of love, and from that point on, their relationship blooms. Together, Matt and Kay Oz uncover the sinister plot behind his wife’s death and Derek Sanders’ intent to overthrow the government. The CIA secretly opposes Derek Sanders and sets Matt up to work for them, but Matt and Kay Oz have their own agenda. Matt and Kay Oz are both intent on revenge for what Derek Sanders has done to them. Joined by fate, Matt and Kay Oz become an unstoppable team.

Matt is certainly no sniper, so he and Kay Oz devise an artificially intelligent sniper rifle that is an expert marksman. Matt sets up the perfect hide for it in plain sight. When the same NSA agents that killed his wife come to kill their next victims, Matt unleashes his weapon on them from across the internet at home.

However, Matt’s revenge comes at a cost. When the FBI reviews all the security videos, Laurie Jennings, Matt’s friend and fellow contractor at Micromotions, is exposed as an industrial spy, embroiling her in this whirlwind. Using the FBI’s information, Derek Sanders’ agents relentlessly hunt Laurie down. Matt feels responsible for Laurie being exposed and refuses to allow NSA agents to kill her as they had killed his wife.

In a daring act of courage, risking his own life, Matt rescues Laurie. Matt and Laurie’s alliance blooms into a tale of resilience and love amidst danger as they narrowly avoid being found and killed by Derek Sanders’ agents. To protect Matt and Laurie, the CIA has to move them out of town and give them new identities. But now, Derek Sanders is intent on his own revenge and sets his best people to hunt them down.

Derek Sanders’ coup fails, and he is expelled from the government. In a twisted turn of events, he disappears and emerges as the Prime Minister of UMBRA – a confederation of the worst terrorist groups and billionaire despots in the world. Using his Ninja spy satellites for the ultimate intel, he considers himself invincible. Derek Sanders’ plan to rule the world is back on track.

That would be until his precious Ninja satellites begin to fail. Matt and Kay Oz sit quietly and watch the satellites they have secretly sabotaged fail as Sanders’ agents relentlessly hunt them down. One by one, the artificially intelligent program in each satellite fires its engines, and the satellites fall from orbit as Derek Sanders’ agents close in on Matt and Laurie.

In a final act of vengeance, Derek Sanders sends a Shahed-128 drone to kill Matt and Laurie. But in a spy-vs-spy ending, what Derek sees from the last of his spy sats is not exactly what really happened.

In an unexpected twist at the end, Kay Oz and Mariah are reunited.

… And our heroes live to fight another day.

However, Derek Sanders has stolen Chaos, the original artificially intelligent program that became Kay Oz. That not only covered his evil tracks but has now crippled the NSA’s electronic intel system. He now intends for UMBRA to use Chaos against them.