In a 2080 Perth run by corporate territories, a company operative is handed his own firm’s leak investigation — while replaying the night he let the one relationship he cared about slip away.
Blade Runner’s corporate noir filtered through Severance’s territorial-employer logic.
The story
Winter Van Riise flies home to a Perth remade into walled corporate territories, its sky criss-crossed by mag-lev rail and air traffic between conglomerate fiefdoms. Half-asleep, he replays — involuntarily, obsessively — the last time he saw Jen, nine months prior, at a departure gate he let her walk through. By morning he’s summoned before Gamestead’s board: there’s a leak selling operational data to rival territories, and despite having no experience in the work, Winter is the one being handed the investigation, on the strength of a single name — Coltraine — and no other evidence at all. Cradle of Industry is a corporate-noir sci-fi feature built on procedural texture: PDA sensor pads, tollways between company territories, planned communities bulldozed into being on a conglomerate’s timeline. Winter’s assignment reads less like trust than like being set up, and he knows it before he’s out of the room.
Coverage — plot points
- Winter flies from Sydney to Perth, replaying the night he lost Jen at a departure gate.
- Perth has been carved into walled corporate territories — Gamestead, McPherson, and rivals — each with its own tollways and sensor-gated borders.
- Gamestead’s board reveals a leak selling data to competing territories, and hands Winter the investigation on a single name: Coltraine.
- Winter accepts the assignment while recognising, unspoken, that he’s the one now being watched.
“You don’t tell them how suspect it all seems. But they know that you know. And suddenly, without awareness of it, you’re walking the tightrope.”
“We’re assigning you to identify and locate the source of our leak.” — “You don’t want to outsource it? What if I’m the leak?” — “We have proof that you’re not. Therefore, it’s on you.”
Read the sample
Below is the existing draft. Scroll to read, or download the PDF.
Seeking representation and/or a producing partner for feature film. Complete script available on request.