A man invites two of his old college friends to dinner where a simple game will have unexpected consequences.
Guessing Game tells the story of Bill, a seemingly down on his luck man who asks two of his former college classmates, the now married couple of Karen and Andrew, out for a reunion dinner. This is no ordinary dinner however, as Bill will ask his two friends to participate in a simple game. What Karen and Andrew don’t know is that this game isn’t just for a laugh – it’s for keeps.
The central idea behind Guessing Game came from my childhood. Just like many other families, my family enjoyed going out to restaurants. Whenever the server would deliver the check, and before my parents would look at it, we would all take a guess as to how much the total price would be – the winner being whoever was the closest.
Now I’m not sure how the tradition actually started, but it has continued into my adulthood. After a recent trip out to eat with my family, I thought to myself, “what would happen if there was some drastic, exaggerated consequence to the loser of this game?”
With the initial idea of Guessing Game in my head I set out to write the script. When I started there were key elements of the story that I wasn’t completely sold on, but I wanted to get it down on paper. What were these “drastic and exaggerated consequences” that I was going to write about? Being a fan of the horror genre and having written many horror stories in the past, they really could have been anything. Monsters, supernatural forces, ghosts…
What I came up with was as simple as the game itself because it was right in front of me. And unfortunately it’s right in front of all of us as Americans every day. We are constantly seeing violence in the news and sometimes it feels like that’s just the way things are.
That’s what we want to get across with Guessing Game. Violence in our country is almost to the point of just being the norm, like another trashy reality TV show or a cash-grab celebrity singing competition. We are becoming desensitized to violence in our world.
Guessing Game will be filmed in Oklahoma City and is currently looking for a cast and a few extra crew members to round out the production.
Website: bit.ly/GuessingGameFilm
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