DEATH OF A UNICORN

Some info on A24's Death of a Unicorn

Prod Co: Square Peg

Location; BULGARIA, CANADA

Writer: Alex Scharf man

Producer: Ari Aster, Lars Knudsen

Director: Alex Scharfman

Cast: Talent: PAUL RUDD [ELLIOTT KINTNER: SET], Richard E. Grant [ODELL LEOPOLD: SET], Jenna Ortega [RIDLEY KINTNER: SET], Will Poulter [SHEPARD LEOPOLD: SET], SHEILA ATIM [SHAW: OFFER]

Logline: A Sackler-like family, whose fortune was made off the opioid crisis, and their put-upon corporate attorney and his family, accidentally kill a unicorn, look to exploit it for riches, and become terrorized by its surviving family.

Characters:

ELLIOTT KINTNER: Corporate lawyer who drags the wife with whom he's separated and the daughter with whom he doesn't get along on to a meeting of a family-run pharmaceutical empire, where he's hoping to secure his role as estate attorney. He hits the unicorn with hls car, and it may get him out of a sticky mess.

ODELL LEOPOLD: Patriarch of the wealthy family and ruthless businessman. Dying of cancer, and been waiting for the unicorn all his life, draped in Mala beads and Kaballah bracelets.

RIDLEY KINTNER: ELLIOTT'S Juul-vaping daughter, self-conscious, a little extra, with a good head on her shoulder. She has an experience with the unicorn that seems to change her.

SHEPARD LEOPOLD: Well-groomed, not without his charms, but still not as charming as he thinks he is.

SHAW: Always wearing leather gloves, her hair in an airtight bun, toughly imperious, Shaw is in the employ of the Leopold family. Quietly observant and inscrutable in her feelings, she is nobody to mess with. Shaw is former-military-turned private contractor, who spent decades being dispatched to the four corners of the globe for
clandestine operations about which she almost never speaks - usually for someone else's profit more than her own. This post as the Leopold family's head of security was supposed to help her transition out of that life, but the weekend's events reignite in her the call to conflict and an opportunity she'd be remiss to pass up. She
tells the others, "I'll track this beast for you... And if its heart's still beating, I'll bring it in alive, too. Because I finish what I start. But now I know my worth: this time I get a cut." ... SEEKING BRITISH
ACTORS. Exceedingly British, leather-gloved, airtight-bunned henchwoman.

GRIFF: Well-meaning, a man who plays things close to the vest, Griff is a long-serving and loyal employee of the Leopold family, A 21st century domestic executive, he is exceptional at his job -- part of which means knowing that his liberal-leaning bosses would never explicitly call him their "butler" or "servant," though that's exactly what they want and expect him to be. Perhaps the sanest and most decent of the group, he is a cautious outsider, always the first to read any situation and last to make his intentions clear to anyone. Nonetheless, he is disdainful of the frantic grasping he sees around
him and is careful to keep himself out of the crosshairs, which helps him last as one of the few to survive the wrath of the unicorns.

OR. VASQUEZ: Bespectacled, prone to speaking with his hands, Dr. Vasquez is a pharmaceutical researcher, whose work has consumed his life, but he secretly harbors a fear that he never reached his potential and it was all for naught. He is summoned to the wilderness to study the
unusual creature that Elliot hit with his car and, after some experimentation, outlines his initial findings with lots of opaque jargon. Despite being a coldly dispassionate skeptic, as is in his
scientific nature, he nonetheless cannot fully explain the miraculous rejuvenating powers of this animal, particularly its horn tissue, and
begins to recognize that it might just be the great discovery for which he will be remembered.

DR. BHATIA: Five minutes late to everything in her life, Dr. Bhatia is Dr. Vasquez's assistant, who finds herself equally perplexed by their findings. Deeply distressed by the escalating carnage, she is horrified and saddened when her mentor is killed by one of the unicorns. Wh lie she doesn't approve of the Leopold family's plot to exploit the dead unicorn, she isn't one to rock the boat, either, and is on the lookout for any opportunity to take advantage of the unpleasant situation in
order to help herself and her partner at home, with whom she hopes to start a family.

RIDLEY: Despite her affected air of detachment, Ridley is anxious and eager to assert her autonomy, but has begrudgingly accompanied her dad, Elliot, to a remote mountain retreat owned by the Leopold family, who control the pharmaceutical company for which he ls an attorney and with whom he hopes to secure an important, lucrative position. She resents being used for (and quietly rebels against} her father's
careerist machinations, but all that is cast aside and replaced by horror, fear and confusion when her dad slams their rental car into a strange beast. .. which very much seems to be a unicorn. Ridley immediately feels a strange and powerful connection to the injured creature, fueled by her own curiosity and mystical bond with the animal, but grows disgusted and angry as her father complicitly supports the avaricious Leopold family's dealings to harness and exploit the majestic beast's curative properties.