A Black, ageless artifact broker with supernatural senses races through 1941 to stop Pearl Harbor while outmaneuvering Nazis, bureaucrats, and his own secrets.
Interested in this script?
Reach out to Dan Stevens directly.
This is a rare period adventure with a true marquee lead: a Black, ageless artifact broker whose charm, secrecy, and supernatural senses drive him through the machinery of World War II. The script pairs a clean historical event hook with a richly textured global world, giving producers a prestige-friendly genre piece that feels both original and commercially legible.
Sir W is a star-making lead.
The role is built for an actor who can play intelligence, elegance, mischief, and moral authority in the same breath. He is not just a hero; he is a personality engine, and that is exactly the kind of part that attracts serious talent.
Evidence from the script
His interrogation-room monologues, his effortless command of the room, and the reveal of his ageless Black aviator/artifact broker persona.
The premise has a clean event spine.
The story is anchored to a recognizable historical pressure point — Pearl Harbor — which gives the movie instant stakes and a built-in audience understanding. That makes the fantasy elements feel purposeful rather than ornamental.
Evidence from the script
The map marked with December Seventh and the final radio broadcast of Roosevelt’s infamy speech.
The world is unusually rich and playable.
Artifact dealers, black markets, embassies, reservations, collectors, and wartime intelligence all create a lived-in ecosystem that can support a feature and potentially more. It feels like a world with rules, not just a backdrop.
Evidence from the script
Cairo’s Wach El Birket district, the Great Mahmoud’s Shop, the Berlin handoff, and the reservation sequence.
The voice is elegant and comic.
Sir W’s language gives the script a premium, actor-friendly identity: formal, sly, and self-aware without losing momentum. That voice can carry marketing, trailers, and word-of-mouth because it is instantly recognizable.
Evidence from the script
His long-winded, impeccably polite evasions in the interrogation room and his deadpan corrections of the interrogators.
The lead’s contradiction is the engine.
He is a man of principle who also steals, lies, barters, and manipulates; that contradiction is what makes him compelling. Producers get a protagonist who can be both aspirational and morally slippery.
Evidence from the script
He insists on contracts and “two of everything,” yet he swaps artifacts, withholds truths, and engineers outcomes.
The supporting relationships have real heat.
Ying, Mahmoud, and Amun are not decorative side characters; they each expose a different facet of Sir W’s code. That gives the movie emotional texture and gives actors meaningful scenes to play, not just exposition delivery.
Evidence from the script
The intimate history with Ying, the old friendship with Mahmoud, and the generational tension in the Cairo shop.
The period detail is commercially legible.
The script doesn’t just evoke 1941; it uses the era’s tobacco, cologne, travel, bureaucracy, and geopolitics as story tools. That specificity helps the movie feel expensive in taste rather than in scale.
Evidence from the script
The interrogators’ tobacco and grooming tells, the aircraft travel, the embassy access, and the wartime black market routes.
The mythology has room to expand.
The Rose of Jericho, the agelessness, the invisibility, the sensory gifts, and the long history with Mahmoud all imply a larger mythic framework. Even as a feature, it suggests franchise or follow-on potential without needing to announce itself as one.
Evidence from the script
References to earlier centuries, the Sahara discovery, the Rose’s healing properties, and Sir W’s long-running business.
The parts inside this script and why an actor would chase them.
Sir W
Lead · Male · 40s playing ageless · Black · physically fit
Sir W is a polished, globe-trotting artifact broker with an upper-class British accent, extraordinary senses, and the kind of self-possession that makes every room bend around him. He is witty, secretive, and deeply principled in his own way, but never simple: he trades in stolen history, keeps his own counsel, and treats time like a luxury he can no longer fully feel. He is the rare action lead who can be funny, seductive, dangerous, and melancholy in the same scene.
Why an actor would want this part
This is the kind of role actors chase because it offers command, mystery, and range in equal measure. It has the verbal elegance of a classic leading man with the physical and mythic charge of a modern franchise character, while also carrying emotional weight beneath the swagger. The performance space lives somewhere between Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood, David Oyelowo in The Butler, and the controlled charisma of a great old-school adventure lead.
Ying
Supporting · Female · 20s-30s · Chinese
Ying is a razor-sharp competitor in the artifact trade who moves through the world in disguise, discipline, and quiet authority. She presents as male in public, but the script reveals a woman who understands leverage, secrecy, and desire better than most of the men around her. She is elegant, dangerous, and emotionally legible without ever becoming soft.
Why an actor would want this part
This is a prestige supporting role with real intrigue: a character who can play seduction, intelligence, betrayal, and wounded history without ever losing control. It offers the kind of layered screen presence that rewards an actor who can suggest whole histories in a glance, in the vein of the cool precision seen in performances like Gong Li in Memoirs of a Geisha or Tilda Swinton in Michael Clayton.
Mahmoud
Supporting · Male · 90s
Mahmoud is the aged patriarch of the Cairo shop, a man whose body is failing but whose memory, pride, and authority still fill the room. He is funny, wounded, affectionate, and stubborn, and his relationship to Sir W carries the weight of decades of shared history and mutual obligation. He gives the movie its oldest soul.
Why an actor would want this part
This is a showcase for a veteran actor who can bring warmth, authority, and mortality into the same frame. The role has the emotional gravity of a late-career performance piece, with the kind of lived-in dignity associated with performances like Christopher Plummer in Beginners or Ben Kingsley in House of Sand and Fog.
Amun
Supporting · Male · 20s · Egyptian
Amun is the grandson caught between family legacy and commercial survival, trying to hold onto a shop that is bigger than his understanding of it. He is proud, practical, and increasingly forced into adult decisions before he has the full map of what he inherited. He gives the story a generational pressure point and a human face inside the myth.
Why an actor would want this part
This is a strong young supporting role because it lets an actor play intelligence under strain and dignity under pressure. It has the kind of grounded emotional specificity that can break out in a prestige ensemble, similar to the younger-family-member energy in films like The Last Black Man in San Francisco or The Kite Runner.
Who would direct this, and who would buy it.
Why a director wants this
A director who wants to stage elegant genre storytelling with historical bite and a singular central voice.
The material rewards a filmmaker who can balance wit, period detail, and mythic momentum without flattening the character. It offers a director the chance to build a stylish, actor-forward adventure with real thematic weight around race, ownership, and history.
Why a buyer wants this
$15-30M prestige feature
Premium historical adventure with awards-adjacent genre appeal
This fits a lane that wants a distinctive lead, a strong hook, and enough period texture to feel eventful without becoming a tentpole. It is especially attractive because the core engine is dialogue- and character-driven, with contained interiors offset by a few high-value travel sequences.