Project Introduction: Nash

This post originated on the Space & Lasers blog.

Hello!

A new post today where I introduce one of my two major screenwriting projects: Nash!

Nash is intended to be a sci-fi live action film series set in humanity’s future.

Project Backstory

Before I get into the setting and story, I want to talk a bit about where this whole project started.

Nash stems from a weird place – High School. During my years there, some friends and I created a web series called KNN. In Year 10 we had this impossibly ambitious plan to make a movie. I even wrote a 155 page screenplay for it – one of those ‘not proper format’ ones I mentioned in my opening post. Obviously, we never got to make it. It would’ve been a mammoth undertaking.

Now that story I wrote then is wildly different to what I have today. For one, the original was set in our High School. That said, some of the key plot points do remain in some form and that screenplay is what started the mountain of ideas and plans I have been writing and rewriting in the years since.

Mass Effect, a video game series I started playing in 2012, is what got me to scrap the High School setting. I abandoned the idea I would ever actually turn this screenplay into a real film on my own and shifted my focus to developing my own complete Sci-Fi universe in written form. This is what led me to create an info document, inspired by Mass Effect’s codex entries. This Info doc helps guide the history, technology and character backstories of my world.

Format

I mentioned the term ‘film series’ above and that’s no accident. Today, the initial first film idea has grown into what I see as a saga of multiple trilogies. Ambitious I know, but I truly have had time to think and plan all this out in my head. Could that change as I actually write the screenplays? Absolutely!

While I have some rough plans and info for multiple films, I’ve been focused on the first entry in the last year or so. I’ve dubbed it Nash: The True Nemesis. I know this is to be the first in a trilogy so while I have tried to self-contain it, there are meant to be some dangling threads left at the end.

My plans for Nash in this blog will be setting the scene, developing the characters and sharing my world as I continue to write and refine. Once I start looking at screenplay festivals, I’ll detail my journey there too.

Story Background

In 2176, humanity found an alien data cache on Mars leading to knowledge of the Universe Portal. This Universe Portal, coupled with a drive to access it, allows for fast transportation across the universe. At the stage my story takes place, humanity’s drives only have the ability to travel between their home system (Sol) and two other discovered systems (Veras and Porter).

Humanity has not yet met alien life, but the ruins on Mars have led them to understand there is, or was, something out there. The other discovery that supported this was a strange chemical in an alien cryo-pod, found in 2381.

It was eventually learned that this chemical could grant humans super abilities. A human with these abilities was called a Vigor Human and they wielded Vigor Abilities. The first Vigor Humans were created hastily in response to humanity’s society and structure falling apart across their systems. The Vigor Humans actions led to the formation of the Human Alliance and Council.

Not long after unification, several of the Vigor Humans turned. Corrupted. They sought to do only one thing – serve the purpose. What is the purpose? No one knows. All that is known is that it involves the destruction of humanity. These corrupted humans were dubbed ‘Shadow Knights’. The non-corrupted Vigor Humans led humanity to a cautious victory in a war against these Shadow Knights.

The First Film’s Story

The first film in this series starts in 2429. It follows Kai Nash – the son of the greatest Vigor Human who helped win the war against the Shadow Knights: Harold Nash. Most believe the Knights have been destroyed. Many of the original Vigor Humans have died or gone missing, all that remains is their children, scattered across humanity’s systems.

The first Nash follows these children banding together. There’s Kai and his best friend, the orphaned Nathan Reach, who Kai’s father raised. Adam Tachett and Zane Auburn have been recruited and trained by the Human Military Alliance (HMA). The HMA, Zane and Adam believe the Shadow Knights are dead and the only threats to humanity are those who oppose the Human Alliance – the Sovereign Colonies. There’s also Lana Flemming, a Vigor Child who doesn’t yet know her abilities or place as both sides rush to recruit her.

While Kai could be seen as the leader and protagonist, I like to think of this whole team as the protagonists. Each has their own story and journey to undergo as they band together and discover what is probably obvious: The Shadow Knights are not gone. They are still very much around and operating in secret. Not only does this new team, dubbed Vigor Force, have to fight this threat, they have to deal with each other’s conflicting views and the overbearing orders of the HMA.

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Obviously, that is a whole lot of surface level information. You’ll find more in-depth info in my series of info drops on Nash which you can find here.

For now, I just wanted to introduce the project, where it came from and where it’s going next.

I will be the first to say, there’s obviously some elements that aren’t wholly original. But what series is completely original today? I think entertainment comes from seeing things we know and love being reworked in new, different and exciting ways. While I have some obvious inspirations, I think I have managed to make them my own and will demonstrate this in future posts. Some of the obvious inspirations you might have picked up on already:

• Vigor Humans and Shadow Knights are similar to the Jedi and Sith of Star Wars, crossed with superheroes.
• Humanity’s path to expanding beyond the Sol System is similar to Mass Effect’s story, but Nash takes a much slower pace.
• The Universe Portal is kind of like the Time Vortex of Doctor Who. How fast you travel in the Universe Portal depends on how deep you go. Go deep enough, you could potentially time travel. But that’s a concept I won’t really delve into too much just yet.

For now, if you have any questions or are curious to know more about anything specific, feel free to comment or reach out through my social media channels.

Til next time,

Dean.