I'm writing a movie-SCRIPT about 7 STRANGERS who get STUCK in an ELEVATOR together. Good MOVIE Idea?

Question

What can I do to the characters, plot, or setting to make this movie something that you would ACTUALLY go pay money to watch?

Answer 1

But what is the ultimate conflict that needs to be resolved?

I mean, they can tell their stories (a la the Decameron), but at the end of it, what does it matter?

Answer 2

Possibility 1: Everybody in the elevator is a member of a tonteen. A tonteen is a primitive insurance scheme where all the participants put money into a pool, held, usually by a third party. The last surviving member of the tonteen gets all the money. Who gets off the elevator alive?

Possibliity 2: You have three divorced married couples who separated with varying degrees of hatred and warfare. The last person is a marriage counselor trying to get home after a rough day at the office, and now he has to pacify six rabid cats in a burlap sack.

Possibility 3: Blend possibilities one and two so that everybody is either trying to surrepticiously kill someone else for the money or just because they hate their ex. There are several possibilities for plot twists involving the money and the marriage counselor.

Possibility 4: The 7 people only think they are strangers. Their lives have been subtly interrelated for years, though nobody has known about it. Reveal the interrelations gradually through flashbacks. It turns out that the unifying force between them all (doesn't really matter what it is) has brought them together to be stuck in the elevator and now all conflicts will somehow be resolved. Violence and sex are popular methods for resolving differences in movies.

Possibility 5: the elevator has stopped because everybody outside has been killed in a massive solar flare, knocking the power out. One of the elevator's inhabitants was listening to the news on his Ipod's FM receiver when it happened, so he's the only one in the elevator who knows, for sure, what happened. The rest of the movie could be a psych drama about most of the elevator's inhabitants (microcosm of society) working through the various states of trauma (denial, rage, acceptance, etc.) until they are able to rescue themselves and find out what's really waiting outside.

All of these possibilities can pretty much be mixed and matched.

Whatever you do, don't do the one where it turns out that everybody in the elevator has been dead for the entire movie, but didn't know it until the last scene. That would just sooo suck.

Answer 3

The fact is people don't get stuck in elevators often or for very long. To do a movie of people stuck in an elevator for very long is just not factual. If the power is off you can push the doors open. And if the floors are of normal hight either the top of the elevator or the bottom will have room for you to crawl out. Now maybe one person & the only one in a building at the time on a day before a holiday week end & you might have something.

Answer 4

You have to add some drama. Personally, I'd make it that there is a fire in the building but the people in the elevator aren't aware that the fire is for real. They think it's just another glitch like all week. Meanwhile, I'd cut sporadically to the building manager and fire chief trying to determine if everyone is out and if firefighters should be put at risk. I'd spend whatever budget I had on special effects and rescue costumes and equipment and extras who have already been evacuated. The main focus can still be the interactions but it will be more intense if the audience knows that the strangers are at risk.

Answer 5

i think it is a very good idea, but to make it more interesting, put flashbacks in it so that the whole thing isnt just a bunch of people sitting in a small room. plus, there should be someone who is clausterphobic. that would be really funny. make the flashbacks so that they have dramatic irony- of a time right before they get stuck in the elevator: say like one person is has to go to a job interview- the most important one of their life, and you know that they are going to get stuck in the elvator becuase thats how the script starts, and you say DONT GO IN THAT ELEVATOR YOU LIFE WILL BE RUINED NOOOOOO JOB!!! dramatic irony always makes a plot better. it would be cool that in the end, they all realize that they were stuck in the elvator for a reason- to learn how to deal with their own problems. i know it sounds a little bit like the breakfast club, but still RUN WITH IT.

Answer 6

I'm waiting to see your movie "Stucked With 6 Strangers (In elevator)"
Good luck.
Let some people make love, and some people pray, some people trying to escape, some people escaping near danger.
Some floors on fire and/or terrorist attacked.
Add some fun and love and thrill. It seems a good plot.

Answer 7

Okay, 7 people stuck in an elevator leaves little room for different scenes. People would become bored by watching people talk in a small area. Terrible idea, sorry.

Answer 8

Their all having sex with each other, but none of them knows that everyone else is doing the same thing they are with the same people!

hmmm, i guess that would make them not strangers?

Ok,

Ms. Muff did it
in the elevator
with a single touch of a button.

I have no CLUE!

LOL!

Or, they could all be long lost family members.

Or something strange could happen and they all develop special powers.

Or, their all in the elevator and then all disappear, taken away by aliens.

Answer 9

If the whole movie is in the elevator is could be something like "Office Space" and be pretty funny.

Answer 10

Let everybody in the elevator be black homosexuals. Let the light go out in the elevator and you hear alot of grounching.

Answer 11

The phone rings,it says "do you know where your children are?" no just kidding.All 7 are something...one is a murderer,one a pregnant sex finatic,and a none,psyciatrist,judge,cop,a drug addict,they get crazy and eventually end up helping each other thru all of the hard times.lots of emotions,baby is delivered,twins.