Bionic (Revised Pitch)

[R.A. Picking]

PREMISE


A year after the tragic incident that destroyed JUSTIN CARTER's (Dylan O'Brien) life, he finds himself dealing with scattered memories of the night in question, among other things. Justin, with the help of his skilled hacker, best friend, CODY BAKER (Logan Lerman) and his team, must bring down Biotech Industries CEO, DEACON BANE (...), whose lust for power overshadows any human decency. Can Justin and the gang foil Deacon's plans or is the world destined to be subjected to another one of Deacon's experiments?


CHARACTERS



Justin Carter (portrayed by Dylan O'Brien)
A brilliant hacker but loner, kept to himself through high school but still had a few good friends including Cody Baker. He left his parents right out of high school and wanted to start his life. He was committed to his girlfriend, Lisa Jacobs since high school and it seemed that nothing could separate them from each other. He started to venture out and using his hacking to read stuff that he probably should've kept away from. On a fateful night, everything with Justin changed forever.



Cody Baker (portrayed by Logan Lerman)
Hacker and a go getter - If there's something that you want he can find it and get around whatever obstacle that may be in his way. In high school, he helped classmates to get better grades and made friends and money that way. Cody is Justin's best friend and felt like nothing could separate them - then after Lisa became the most important thing in Justin's life - then Cody felt like a third wheel.



Tom Bane (portrayed by Daniel Sharman)
Tom is one of the youngest executives at Biotech Industries and trying to work his way to the top. Over the past year, he started a side job after some crazy things happened inside the company. He started up a team of people that did some secret missions to gain more information about their target - which happened to be the very company he worked for. He's a charmer and has been dating his personal assistant but tries to keep under covers (no pun intended). He wants to make sure he keeps up his cover and be able to use his position at the company to find the truth.


(Not Represented at this time)
Deacon Bane (portrayed by ? ?)
Deacon Bane is a dark and stern owner of the Biotech Industries and the almighty dollar and power is the ultimate push for Deacon. He doesn't care who he tramples over to get what he wants or to make sure that no one else out there is going to steal his idea. Some of his darkest dealings have been held in secret and most employees of the company don't know anything about. His own family is intimidated by him not knowing what he would ultimately do to keep himself out of prison.



Billy (portrayed by Richard Harmon)
Billy is the bad boy wanting to do whatever he wants. He won't let anyone stand in his way and will take what he wants and make it his own even if it means violence and hurting people.



Frank Jacobs (portrayed by Jason Beghe)
Frank Jacobs is a passionate and loyal employee at Biotech and a leading technician. He is respected and trusted by the owner of the company. After losing his wife in a tragic accident, his focus always remained on his daughter. It was hard for Frank to ever begin a new relationship with anyone even though he tried many times and it soon became evident that it always had to be about making sure his daughter came first. He is very protective and sometimes too much as she got older.



Lisa Jacobs (portrayed by Naomi Scott)
Lisa Jacobs is Frank's daughter. A beautiful and angelic part of Frank's life and Justin's girlfriend. She loves her father as a daughter should but her love is also focused on Justin, her very one and true love since college. They are hardly apart, and when they are it seems that the world is going to end. Kind of ridiculous to some but their love is what keeps them so close. She sees things that some people don't see and she begins to see things that could change things for good.


EPISODES


101 - Breaking In
Cody hacks his way into the Biotech servers to retrieve information vital for his mission. Security is tracking down the possible thief.

102 - Broken Code
Back at the bunker, Cody is anxious about finding out if the information downloaded was helpful towards the mission but what they find out is not what they expected.

103 - Flashbacks
Justin has a blast from his past and him and Cody share a few memories about their past and discuss the mysterious woman in his dreams.

104 - New Player
Justin and Cody sneak back into Biotech to complete a mission but Justin has other plans when he gets inside.

105 - Black Widow
Billy gets a look at the Black Widow project and the potentially sinister plan behind it. Someone on Tom's team is in trouble and putting Tom's mission in trouble.

106 - Betrayal
Justin demands to know more about this mysterious girl in his dreams and discovers the reality of his situation, meanwhile someone on the team is in danger.

107 (Sequence One Finale) - Darkness
Tom gets word that someone on his team is in trouble and a new mission begins to rescue this team member before it's too late.

---

SOUNDTRACK FOR OPENING CREDITS:

[Jon Van Pelt]

Hi Andrew

Just finished reading the pilot episode.

First: it’s a vast improvement over the previous pilots you wrote for BIONIC. It definitely feels like a more coherent story.

The only thing that didn’t really work for me was the opening scene at BIOTECH. The conversation between Dane/Cody about the sports bar, I didn’t feel it added something interesting to the character of Cody. I know it was just banter between two colleagues, but still, I think this scene could be better.


I know you’ve worked very hard on this series, so both thumbs up!

[Jack Malone]

101 'Breaking In' Review

I think there's something to be said about opening scenes and how they should draw an audience in and either be this huge projection of what the series will be about (example: Buffy the Vampire Slayer subverting the fear of the woman being in danger to show that she is, in fact, the danger) or just some big moment to lure us in immediately (example: Smallville throwing an entire meteor shower onto the town and wiping people out). To start the series with a discussion on available women, treating "gay" as if it's something you need to quickly defend if someone so much as hints you could be of that sexuality... It did feel like a bit of a misguided beginning and slightly out of place. I think there's definite humour in "Are you sure it’s the ladies you’re looking for?" and have Cody shrug or chuckle or whatever while Dane exits the scene as opposed to giving us a very robotic "I'm not gay" response. You'll hopefully have a full sequence to show us what this character's sexuality is, to show us more of his identity and so I don't think you have to keep that line to either be funny or to defend it as "character building." For example, when I talked to Brian about his 101 Ways to Survive High School, he had two characters that had a lot of chemistry on the page but he was adamant about having scenes where they're like "This is X and they're like a brother to me," "Oh no, they're just my friend, we're practically siblings," etc and regardless of whether or not they would grow out of that and be more, or remain friends, and remain in whatever dynamic they were, it's better to have the audience come to learn about their dynamic and identify it rather than spelling things out for people in such an "I'm telling you what is what" kind of way. So that's definitely something I think you could look into editing if you feel like doing another draft.

From then on out, however, the pilot was really really good. I particularly enjoyed the suspense of it all. I truly felt that with each new line of action, things were growing more and more tense and that's a reflection of you and how well you write. Things were very much amping up as Cody was discovered, and he was on the run from the trackers, and I almost forgot that he wasn't the main character in this situation when Justin aka Bionic showed up and saved the day. Part of me was a little unsure how I felt about the pilot focusing so much on Cody instead of Justin, but I think when you look at it as a whole you'll see that the first half was about establishing the hero and the last half was about establishing the big bad in Deacon. Speaking of Deacon, that last scene was also really well done. I think you set him up to be quite a powerful figure, and a very strict one at that who has his own code, you know? I liked - in a twisted kind of way - that he wanted to punish Billy and it felt more like there was no questioning about it or talking his way out of it. 

In talking about the future, I'd really like to see another draft with this one just polished up. You don't have to take any criticisms on board that you feel go against what you're trying to say or do but there were just some formatting problems with action written as dialogue and things of that nature that could use some cleaning up. Other than that, I think the webisode format is very appealing to me as a reader and I'd love to see TheVPN have more. Bionic could be a great addition to the lineup, so I wish you all the luck with it and I genuinely enjoyed this first episode! 


 

[R.A. Picking]

Mar 17, 2016 23:50:26 GMT -6 Jon Van Pelt said:

The only thing that didn’t really work for me was the opening scene at BIOTECH. The conversation between Dane/Cody about the sports bar, I didn’t feel it added something interesting to the character of Cody. I know it was just banter between two colleagues, but still, I think this scene could be better.


I know you’ve worked very hard on this series, so both thumbs up!

Awesome. Thanks for checking it out. I appreciate the feedback and I totally understand. I didn't know either if I liked it so it's possibly something that I will be changing up or doing a different scene there. Thanks again.

[R.A. Picking]

Mar 18, 2016 2:41:50 GMT -6 Jack Malone said:

101 'Breaking In' Review

I think there's something to be said about opening scenes and how they should draw an audience in and either be this huge projection of what the series will be about (example: Buffy the Vampire Slayer subverting the fear of the woman being in danger to show that she is, in fact, the danger) or just some big moment to lure us in immediately (example: Smallville throwing an entire meteor shower onto the town and wiping people out). To start the series with a discussion on available women, treating "gay" as if it's something you need to quickly defend if someone so much as hints you could be of that sexuality... It did feel like a bit of a misguided beginning and slightly out of place. I think there's definite humour in "Are you sure it’s the ladies you’re looking for?" and have Cody shrug or chuckle or whatever while Dane exits the scene as opposed to giving us a very robotic "I'm not gay" response. You'll hopefully have a full sequence to show us what this character's sexuality is, to show us more of his identity and so I don't think you have to keep that line to either be funny or to defend it as "character building." For example, when I talked to Brian about his 101 Ways to Survive High School, he had two characters that had a lot of chemistry on the page but he was adamant about having scenes where they're like "This is X and they're like a brother to me," "Oh no, they're just my friend, we're practically siblings," etc and regardless of whether or not they would grow out of that and be more, or remain friends, and remain in whatever dynamic they were, it's better to have the audience come to learn about their dynamic and identify it rather than spelling things out for people in such an "I'm telling you what is what" kind of way. So that's definitely something I think you could look into editing if you feel like doing another draft.

From then on out, however, the pilot was really really good. I particularly enjoyed the suspense of it all. I truly felt that with each new line of action, things were growing more and more tense and that's a reflection of you and how well you write. Things were very much amping up as Cody was discovered, and he was on the run from the trackers, and I almost forgot that he wasn't the main character in this situation when Justin aka Bionic showed up and saved the day. Part of me was a little unsure how I felt about the pilot focusing so much on Cody instead of Justin, but I think when you look at it as a whole you'll see that the first half was about establishing the hero and the last half was about establishing the big bad in Deacon. Speaking of Deacon, that last scene was also really well done. I think you set him up to be quite a powerful figure, and a very strict one at that who has his own code, you know? I liked - in a twisted kind of way - that he wanted to punish Billy and it felt more like there was no questioning about it or talking his way out of it. 

In talking about the future, I'd really like to see another draft with this one just polished up. You don't have to take any criticisms on board that you feel go against what you're trying to say or do but there were just some formatting problems with action written as dialogue and things of that nature that could use some cleaning up. Other than that, I think the webisode format is very appealing to me as a reader and I'd love to see TheVPN have more. Bionic could be a great addition to the lineup, so I wish you all the luck with it and I genuinely enjoyed this first episode! 


 

Thanks for the review Jack and I totally understand and appreciate everything that you said.  I think it's always good to get good and bad reviews because it sometimes makes you want to be a better writer - but sometimes it causes you think hard and long about what you think you're doing.

I'm going to take a look at that scene again and try to come up with something different that would work seamlessly with everything else that is going on.

The technical errors with formatting and such - I was hoping that I caught everything last night as I was having to reformat the script because of technical difficulties with a program that I was using.  That's not an excuse - and those errors will be corrected.

I can honestly say that hat is off to my beta reader who will get credit on each script if the show is picked up.  Thank You!!

I'm glad that you enjoyed the other parts of the script and again some of that enhancing quality was from my beta reader who helped me twist and mix things to make it better.  It's like I write the clunky stuff and he makes it smoother and even way better.

Thanks again for reading and the revision will be coming.

[Jay Paterson]

Just sat down to read the pilot and I gotta say I thoroughly enjoyed it.

You really have something great here. I always feel like its hard to get someone fully invested into both your characters and plot when its a webisode pilot because you only have so many paged to do so, which is why I think people have touched on the conversation between Dane and Cody. I feel like if you solely focus on what pushes the set up forward it will work better and even keep this conversation or relationship between Dane and Cody for later. 

They story itself was mysterious. You never really gave us much in the pilot, in a good way because now I need to know more. Like, what was Cody stealing and why was it worth risking his life for? Who really is Justin and why has he become this Bionic? What does Deacon have planned for them both? 

The mystery behind it all has me very intrigued and your bad guy, Deacon is pretty terrifying. I love a show that can keep me on the edge of my seat which this one did. Especially when the trackers were coming after Cody and he was still downloading the files and the fight scene with Bionic was pretty bad-ass. 

I'm routing for this to be picked up so keep up the good work. I look forward to reading the re-draft and so on.  

[R.A. Picking]

Mar 19, 2016 11:49:41 GMT -6 Jay Paterson said:

Just sat down to read the pilot and I gotta say I thoroughly enjoyed it.

You really have something great here. I always feel like its hard to get someone fully invested into both your characters and plot when its a webisode pilot because you only have so many paged to do so, which is why I think people have touched on the conversation between Dane and Cody. I feel like if you solely focus on what pushes the set up forward it will work better and even keep this conversation or relationship between Dane and Cody for later. 

They story itself was both intense and mysterious. You never really gave us much in the pilot, in a good way because now I need to know more. Like, what was Cody stealing and why was it worth risking his life for? Who really is Justin and why has he become this Bionic? What does Deacon have planned for them both? 

The mystery behind it all has me very intrigued and your bad guy, Deacon is pretty terrifying. I love a show that can keep me on the edge of my seat which this one did. Especially when the trackers were coming after Cody and he was still downloading the files and the fight scene with Bionic was pretty bad-ass. 

I'm routing for this to be picked up so keep up the good work. I look forward to reading the re-draft and so on.  

Thanks Jay for checking out the pilot episode and wow someone else enjoyed it.  That's freaking awesome.  I know that opening scene with Cody and Dane seems like a place where I need to change something - somehow and keep the enjoyment and suspense going.  I will have to look at that this week and hopefully get a revised script up as soon as possible since I want to push forward on this as quickly as possible.

I like the idea of a webisode because you can keep it to the point.  You don't need the filler scenes that don't fit most of the times and get frustrated because you have to write something else - that you DON'T enjoy.  That's my opinion with webisodes.

As far as Deacon - yes the intense and fierce way he is coming off and they way I described him in the script it didn't match the character that I had representing him.  I'm still looking for someone to fit that bill or I may just use the readers imagination if I don't find that person.

Thanks again.  To everybody that has read it so far - Thank You!

[R.A. Picking]

I added my selection for Opening Credits for this show to the original post at the bottom of it. I would love to do an Opening Credit video some day but I'm not sure if I have the patients.

[R.A. Picking]

Pilot episode has been revised to make the opening scene different. They are minor changes but check it out.

[Jon Van Pelt]

Just re-read the pilot episode.


The opening scene between Cody/Dane makes more sense now .

[R.A. Picking]

Mar 25, 2016 9:52:30 GMT -6 Jon Van Pelt said:

Just re-read the pilot episode.


The opening scene between Cody/Dane makes more sense now .

Thank you Jon for viewing it a second time. Appreciated.

[Jack Malone]

I'm glad the opening scene was changed around a bit. Definitely read much better. Well done!  

[Brady Brown]

I've got to reverberate what the previous reviews have said—this is definitely the best draft yet. I quite enjoyed it. There was a real brisk pace carried by a nice suspense that really kept me intrigued all the way through. I saw this pilot in the early stages, and I just want to commend you for how far you've come with your writing.

[R.A. Picking]

Apr 10, 2016 11:40:09 GMT -6 Brady Brown said:

I've got to reverberate what the previous reviews have said—this is definitely the best draft yet. I quite enjoyed it. There was a real brisk pace carried by a nice suspense that really kept me intrigued all the way through. I saw this pilot in the early stages, and I just want to commend you for how far you've come with your writing.

Thanks Brady for checking out the current pilot. Very much appreciated.