Plus 50
An environmental screenplay about a realistic future by screenwriter Wade Wofford.
Below:
Overview
The year...2070.
A heat wave brutalizes Atlanta. Its streets are flooded with displaced residents from Miami, New Orleans, and other coastal towns…the once middle class home-owners that insurance companies will no longer insure (the hurricane season too great a risk). The booming homeless population living in the streets dies by the hordes due to heat exposure, and the coroner's office is overwhelmed. The garbage trucks have been equipped with biohazard bins to collect the bodies. Joe, a sanitation worker, takes turns with his co-worker sitting in the air-conditioning of the garbage truck. Every ten stops, he returns to the 120-degree heat to round up trash and dead bodies.
In a small town in Western Colorado, temperature isn't a problem; water is. Sean is working his way off the grid, preparing for a moment he fears will come all too soon. He teaches his teenage son Zachary how to purify polluted rainwater, generate his own electricity, hide crops from the inevitable hordes of starved and desperate neighbors. As the water shortage worsens, his fears about human nature are confirmed. Down the mountain in the suburbs, Sean's ex-wife Jenny - who very much enjoys her middle class comforts - struggles to raise money for a School for the Blind that she's attempting to open.
Wei leaves his office overlooking the DC Promenade for a flight home to China, where his mother lays ill. China is in ruins - its rivers polluted, its drinking water unable to sustain its booming population. He finds in his former home a national crisis of thirst. Militias control local purification plants, and sell water only to the highest bidder; the rest wither in the streets. Wei fights his way across the country to reach his family before his mother dies.
In Tomboctou, Mali, oil has been discovered to the east. But the large populations living along the Niger consume so much of the river's water that the barges cannot get out to export the oil to the U.S. Bintou, a 23 year-old villager, finds her family slaughtered by mercenaries. A friend smuggles her through the genocide and onto one of the barges, where she stows away and makes the treacherous journey to New York City. When she arrives, the "land of promise" poses little improvement for the onslaught of like immigrants.
Depicting a future unconcerned with gadgetry and technology, Plus 50 focuses upon actual scientific projections that cannot be dismissed by the "fake news" and "not in my lifetime" doubters... It strikes out to answer the question: "What will life be like in fifty years if we continue on our current path?" It follows four families from very different walks of life battling the challenges of one world - a planet sickened by the choices of a neglected past.
Characters
Plus 50 was crafted to document how different classes of people, in different regions of the world, may be affected by the future if today's environmental problems continue on their current path. Plus 50's ensemble was created specifically to give voice to a variety of perspectives within that collective experience.
Joe (The Lower Class)
Joe's been a sanitation worker in Atlanta for years, but it's never been this bad. His father's battling cancer and Joe's his sole care-giver. The union is about to go on strike over the new working conditions. A strike, for Joe, means no health insurance for his father's condition.
Jenny (The Middle Class)
Jenny just wants to be comfortable, and start a school to help the blind children she teaches. She and her husband bicker about where to keep the thermostat and lament the days before the water restrictions that turned their lawn brown.
Wei (The Upper Class)
Wei hasn't been home to China since he moved to the United States. He married a Chinese woman, and despite the wealth they've amassed, remain infertile. Upon hearing that his mother (who he hasn't seen in 20 years) is on her deathbed, he decides to fight his way through China's Civil War to see her.
Bintou (The Immigrant)
Bintou and her 9-month-old daughter Rokia get caught in the middle of a slaughter. All of the villagers who live along the Niger River in Mali - including Rokia's husband, sister and mother - are murdered by mercenaries. Bintou narrowly escapes, and makes her way to the United States in hope of finding a better life.
Sean (The Survivalist)
Sean works as a park ranger, and has seen crisis coming for a long time. Soon, the sinks in the homes of Colorado where he lives will produce...nothing. When that happens, Sean suspects it's going to get ugly. He's spent years working his way off the grid, teaching his son how to prepare for the worst.
Supporting Diverse Cast
While Plus 50 is centered around this ensemble of five core characters, each exists in a world of complex and diverse people--from a Puerto Rican truck driver (who helps Bintou) to an insightful blind child (Jenny's student) to a grumpy and wise old man (Joe's ailing Dad), Plus 50 is a cast that reflects the diversity of the globe.
The World of the Story
ATLANTA
With displaced populations from coastal cities streaming northward to here and other southern cities, social services are over-stretched. This summer's 120° heat wave is killing the homeless by the hordes.
THE RIO GRANDE
The U.S.'s need for water exceeded the supply of the Rio Grande, which was drank down to mud, then dried up entirely - breaking treaties with Mexico and mounting international tensions.
THE SUBURBS
Salmon now extinct, frequent summer brown-outs in most cities, and bottled water now $20 a bottle, only the rich can afford today's level of comfort - including cooling their homes in summer. The middle class struggles to maintain the comforts it's come to expect,
TOKYO, JAPAN
Following decades of devastation, many displaced citizens of Southeast Asian islands have found themselves with nowhere to go. Struggling to protect their own resources, Japanese armed forces are tasked with rounding up refugees.
TIMBUKTU, MALI
The discovery of oil in Mali, and the profiting desire to get it out, turns the country to genocide. Profiteering mercenaries slaughter riverside populations to get the oil barges out for sale to the northern hemisphere.
MIAMI
The city's not underwater, but the growing frequency of hurricanes - and the insurance claims that go with them - have rendered the city uninsurable. Fortunes were lost here, and the now-homeless former tenants of wrecked homes flood northward into other cities.
COLORADO
The Ogallala Aquifer, which has provided Colorado and seven other midwestern states with residential and agricultural water for decades, goes dry. Tens of millions of homes turn on their taps and get...air. Civil War brews.
LUOHE, CHINA
China's growing drought season is sometimes followed by torrential rains. The ground too dry to soak the water up, massive floods have destroyed cities - forcing the country to abandon entire municipalities.
Help Get It Made
Award-winning Writer/Director Wade Wofford is trying to make Plus 50 a reality. If you are interested in reading the script, introducing us to press/investors/politicians/industry-leaders with a passion for the environment, or doing anything else to assist, please reach out to us via our Contact Form.