Wet Nose Films · Limited series · 6 × 60′ · Feature configuration available · Working title · In early development
A family shipping dynasty gathers for Thanksgiving because the heir is dead and there is a will. The will settles nothing. Neither does the weekend.
The old man never named a successor while he was alive, and he has found a way not to name one now that he is dying. So his family sit down to be grateful, and carve each other instead.
Thanksgiving, not Christmas. It is the North American holiday built for this exact kind of bloodletting: everyone trapped in one house, obligated to be grateful, carving something, and no religious sentiment anywhere to soften a single person in the room.
They are gathered because the original heir died recently, and because there is a will. Nobody is there for turkey.
Present day. Modern money, modern ports, and a family that has been doing this to each other for a very long time.
The old man does to them in death exactly what he did in life.
Following the history: Henry II never named a successor, and that refusal is precisely what drove Richard into alliance with Philip against his own father. The withholding was the instrument.
Here the will arrives, is read, and resolves nothing. It is not a puzzle to be solved and there is no missing page. The document is exactly as ambiguous as the man who wrote it intended, and every person in the house can read it as a promise to themselves.
Because the empire is a shipping company, the succession fight is a control fight: shareholding, routes, hulls, board seats. Territory that can literally be divided between sons, and therefore literally fought over.
One weekend, six accounts. Each episode belongs to one person in the house and tells their version of the same three days, and the versions do not agree.
The Affair, run on a succession fight. The discrepancies carry the meaning: what each person remembers being said to them, who they remember apologising, which version of the old man was in the room. Memory as self-justification, six times over.
This is the structural payoff of the register the material already wants: everyone is right from where they are standing. Nobody is the villain. Everyone is monstrous. A POV structure is the only form that can hold all six of those as true at once.
He has a new wife and has already moved on. His account is of a family that will not let him retire in peace.
The one with a genuine claim and a genuine grievance. Keeps Philip. His account is the cleanest and the least honest.
The adopted one. His account is a ledger of everything he has done and been given no credit for, and it is accurate.
She wants the father and nothing else. Hers is the only account in which the business barely appears.
She has her own fleet and came by choice. Her account reveals how much of the weekend she arranged.
No single POV. The will, the door, the laugh. And the only version of events the company will ever minute.
Six is the number that gives every claimant a full hour without repeating the weekend past the point of pleasure.
Each seat at the table is named here by its historical equivalent, so the shape of the fight reads at a glance.
Henry equivalent
Does not care about the succession, because he has a new wife and has already moved on. This is not a bluff. His indifference is the most destabilising thing in the house: there is no prize to win from a man who has stopped playing, and his children cannot accept that.
Eleanor equivalent
Still has her own base and her own claim: her own ships, her own line, her own routes. A competitor as much as a wife. She has been away doing her own work and is genuinely happier there; this is not exile, she comes by choice. She wants the succession and she wants him, but not really: what she wants is to be the one who decides. Because she does not need any of them, she can leave, and the threat of leaving is her weapon. Used once, late.
The adopted one
Does everything his father asks and always believes he is in the running. The earning is exactly what disqualifies him. The real sons never had to. He wants power he can never get, and the tragedy is that he is the only one of them who would be good at it. His consolation holding is the Greek branch, the arm nobody thinks matters.
Richard equivalent
Keeps Philip. The alliance is real, it is against his father, and it costs him more than the company is worth. The wound belongs to him and stays with him.
Alais equivalent · cast a major Greek star
Greek, and she brings the Greek piece of the business with her. She wants only the father and has no political ambition whatsoever, which makes her the single most dangerous person at the table. Left deliberately open until casting: either married (assets of her own, safe, does not need the table) or still a fiancée, vulnerable, with a possible pregnancy she may not even want as her only leverage. The moment that possibility enters the room, every son’s claim goes provisional.
She stops at the door, and they laugh.
“See you at the next board meeting.”
Instead of see you at Easter. The war never ends. It just gets rescheduled, and now it has a calendar invitation.
Very sharp-witted and tongue-in-cheek, played entirely straight. The pleasure is people who love each other being articulate about the damage.
Everyone is right from where they are standing. Nobody is the villain. Everyone is monstrous.
The whole thing lives or dies on the dialogue. Get the wit right and it sings; miss it and it is rich people arguing. That is the single production risk worth naming up front, and it is a writing-room problem, not a budget problem.
The shipping-dynasty setting draws an obvious comparison, and the answer is form and scale: one weekend, six subjective accounts, a closed ending. Not an open-ended corporate saga.
The refusal to decide is itself the decision, and it outlives the man who made it.
Inheritance rewards the ones who never had to try. Geoffrey is the proof.
Freedom is not needing the table. It is also the only leverage anyone in this family respects.
Nobody lies outright. Everybody remembers themselves as the reasonable one.
Shoot in Greece, with Greek ports doubling for the US. Because the family is an American shipping dynasty with a Greek branch, a meaningful part of the show plays as itself rather than as a double, which is where the money and the production value stop fighting each other.
A Greek line producer is already identified.
| Territory | Headline | Terms |
|---|---|---|
| Greece | 40% flat | Cash rebate on eligible spend, capped €8M per project, plus tax relief up to 30%. Simplest money and the best headline rate. |
| Malta | up to 40% | 30% base; 35% if Malta plays itself or Malta Film Studios is used; 40% with qualifying local crew levels. |
| Singapore | 40% + 10% | Cash rebate plus a 10% grant usable only on the next project. |
| Australia | 30% | Location Offset, but requires A$20M qualifying spend. State incentives can push the effective rate toward 40%. |
| New Zealand | 20% + 5% | Base plus uplift, opening at NZ$4M. The accessible one at mid-budget. |
Greece leads on rate and on story logic, which is rare enough to be the plan rather than the option.
Feature configuration. The same material holds as a single film: one house, one weekend, played continuous. The limited series is the route, because the POV structure needs the episodes to work. The feature exists if the room wants film.
The Greek is written both ways, and stays that way until she is cast. Married, she has assets of her own and does not need the table. Still a fiancée, a possible pregnancy she may not want is her only leverage, and the moment that enters the room, every son’s claim goes provisional. The actor decides which story we are telling.
Wet Nose Films
Daniela Barbosa · Creator and Producer
Twenty years as a 1st Assistant Director · DGC and DGA
info@wetnosefilms.ca