MAX & CHARLIE is a modern take on a young boy's Alice in Wonderland: we follow an adorable young boy (Charlie!) as he chases his dog (Max!) through a beautiful dreamed day in New York City. As Charlie travels through this vibrant and surreal cityscape, he confronts his dawning perception of chaos and its relative patterns: by interacting with iconic city characters and growing through a series of timeless lessons, Charlie begins to see and eventually appreciate the chaos and patterns that pervade life.
This is quite fundamentally a simple, sweet, and lovely little adventure through the greatest city in the world on one of the most beautiful days imaginable. And while the edge of this high-level idea (chaos and its patterns) could be overly heady, it's relieved by the sweetness of Charlie himself and the abstract world that is a dreamed New York City.
MAX & CHARLIE will be rated G and the overall property will strive for the broadest-possible appeal. Written as a "thinking kid's" movie, its thematic hooks and visual style will nonetheless appeal to a wide demographic: like any successful children's property, it will aim to speak to the kid in all of us.
Variations of the same feature-length script (which has been written) will be made into three primary (and independently-created) properties: a graphic novel, a feature film, and a video game. MAX & CHARLIE will utilize an "indie tentpole" model, with which we will create a lasting franchise of numerous international merchandising SKUs. Using small, talented teams of craftspeople, we will create and distribute high-quality digital and physical products while using proven cross-platform business strategies.
MAX & CHARLIE was written to be a small, stylized film production that will be relatively cheap to produce but made to look big and expensive when released. Due to the the creator's prior success with low-budget small-crew New York City filmmaking, a mix of guerilla and permit shooting will be used. And because of the independent nature of the production itself, we'll be able to maximize strategic partnerships with the city and creative community while creating a New York City story that stands alone in its distinct, vibrant voice.
MAX & CHARLIE will be shot in beautiful stereoscopic 3D, bolstering the surreal visual backbone of the underlying storyline. It's also worth noting that while the visuals will be highly stylized and use the latest in available digital trickery, the film will be live-action; that is, not animated. We're saving an animated version for television rights!
Due to the rapidly increasing level of quality 3D technology, the cost of shooting in 3D will not add significantly to the overall cost of production. MAX & CHARLIE's creator has spent years refining 3D workflows and has taken pains to keep the story within the means of a small guerilla crew — the majority of the production will use steadicam-based shooting, enabling us to maintain a nimble production while vividly portraying the fluidity of our story's dreamworld.
The film's running time is approximately 85 minutes; roughly 20 shooing days will be needed (with a very small production crew). The film will employ mostly in-camera effects, though a layer of seamless/unobtrusive visual effects will be applied in post production (again, created by a small team of independent artists).
The video game will offer an exciting tablet-based experience within MAX & CHARLIE's same underlying story and surreal world. Users will play as Max or Charlie and encounter the endless characters, interactions, and lessons that the chaos of New York City provides. MAX & CHARLIE's video game will offer a compelling open-world gaming experience to a broad G-rated market: each "level" will employ a different proven gameplay mechanism, each set over distinct areas of the dreamed city.
The result will be a studied 3D modernization of the best level design and gameplay mechanisms throughout video game history: consider one level being a "traditional" side-scroller set in a dreamed West Village (a la Mario Bros); another will be a first-person "shooter" (using a bubble gun!) through Chinatown; another will show an overhead "maze" view of Central Park as Charlie chases Max, while being chased himself (a modern/surreal version of Pac Man). The level possibilities through our cityscape are endless, and as ever, this property will be created from its earliest conception to be family-friendly and as accessible as possible.
MAX & CHARLIE's video game will be developed in the UNITY platform, which offers seamless multi-platform publishing: we can design and build our game and easily publish different versions for iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad, Android, Mac, PC, Web, Wii, Xbox 360/One, and PlayStation 3/4; because video games can be digitally distributed through each platform's built-in online marketplace, we'll have no physical overhead. The independent video game market is huge and increasingly lucrative — these digital marketplaces are well-developed and growing across all platforms.
MAX & CHARLIE's graphic novel is in post-production. The film and video game are in preproduction. We are currently raising financing for MAX & CHARLIE's Spring 2015 shoot, which will be co-produced with Dogfish Pictures (Like Crazy, Compliance, Prince Avalanche). EXIT STRATEGY is seeking additional financial, creative, technology, and co-production partners.
The feature-length screenplay and the graphic novel's full color prototype are available upon request. Contact us to take a look at either: [email protected]
Download MAX & CHARLIE's one sheet ⤴
(pdf, 475kb)MAX & CHARLIE was written and created by Zack Lieberman; he will also direct and produce each property. Everything will be overseen by EXIT STRATEGY, the award-winning production company that Lieberman co-founded with Ryan Koo. Together, they wrote, directed and produced the "urban western" web series THE WEST SIDE (thewestside.tv), which won the Webby Award for Best Drama Series. Koo is the founder of the popular filmmaking website NO FILM SCHOOL (nofilmschool.com) and Lieberman won an Emmy Award for his digital work at Sony Pictures Television. EXIT STRATEGY has helped build a network of websites that garner over 50 million combined page views per month for web and video clients including MTV, CMT, VH1, Rhapsody, Focus Features, Saks Fifth Avenue, Ralph Lauren and Dr. Oz.
We'd love to tell you more about our company and what we're up to. Check us out at exitstrategy.tv or contact us to say hello: [email protected]