CUB

SCREENPLAY + MIDDLE-GRADE FICTION

Cub is a fantastical rites-of-passage story that explores emerging masculinity in adolescent boys on a gritty council estate. On the advice of Terry Rossio (he wrote some small indie family films you’ve probably never heard of like Shrek and Pirates of the Caribbean) I’m developing this screenplay into middle-grade fiction.

12 yr old Archie Button has a secret. For his entire life he has been intermittently turning into a monster. A relatively harmless monster who his Mum has been able to handle up to now… but he’s growing up, and who knows what he will soon be capable of. 

When Mum has to go into hospital, Archie relocates to his Grannie Gertie’s on the tough Longmoors Estate where there are monsters of a different kind. Dodging bullies and bad-boys, his peers seem to be embodying the worst elements of ‘being a man’ in the absence of any positive male role models. 

However, when Archie hears rumours of a real monster that lurks in the nearby forest, he reasons that it might provide answers for his own transformations. He sets out on a quest to find it and ultimately determine the nature of his own beast.

I love monsters. I love exploring rite-of-passage stories about boys navigating how to become men. Cub is me sinking my teeth into both subjects.