Modal

IN ONE SENTENCE:

After discovering an A.I. that lets her manipulate the future, a troubled high school student must stay one step ahead of a relentless tech CEO in order to learn the truth about her mother’s disappearance.

IN A FEW MORE:

MODAL tells the story of high school sophomore Aster Negra and the advanced artificial intelligence “MOM” (short for Multiform Outcomes Manipulator) inside her head that gives her the power to manipulate the future. With the help of her best (and only) friend Oren and the peculiar FBI-agent-turned-lunch-lady Westlow, Aster and MOM set out to unravel the 10-year-old mystery of Aster’s mother’s disappearance. The only thing standing in their way is the world’s biggest tech company, Max Industries, and it’s powerful founder Ezra Max who has his own agenda for the future.

Tackling themes of grief, loss, and agency through a lens of science fiction, the show is built for a young-adult audience and anyone who remembers what it’s like to be a teenager growing up in an uncertain world.

A serialized, binge-ready show where every episode has a beginning, middle, and end. The goal is to have both monster-of-the-week comfort and epic season arcs to follow.

Who says we can’t have it all?

It’s not a show made just for teens, but it is a show about being a teenager. Modal is a spiritual successor to shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Veronica Mars, snark included. It tackles big issues through a lens of youthful optimism and resilience— never afraid to wear its heart on its sleeve.

This world has rules and they will not be thrown out for a convenient plot device. Even though Modal deals with scientific unknowns like possible futures and alternate universes, our exploration of these themes will be informed by real theory and follow a consistent internal logic.

While there will definitely be elements of action and lots of humor, at its core, this show is about people and their relationships. It will grapple with themes of grief and tragic loss, mental health, bullying, friendship, parenting, and yes—young love.

BEING A TEENAGER IS A PARADOX

The world still treats you like a kid. There are rules to be followed and expectations to be met. Your opinions are dismissed, wishes overlooked, and strongly held beliefs chalked up to youthful exuberance. You’re constantly told that you’re just not ready.

And yet, you’re asked to make choices every day that will affect the rest of your life—and the world is keeping score! At the start of freshman year you’re told that all your successes and fuck-ups go into a “permanent record.” So every decision takes on life-or-death proportions, as though deciding where to sit at lunch could change the course of your entire life. Who knows? Maybe it did.

As a teenager, I’d lie awake at night replaying moments from my day over and over in my head. I’d agonize over every detail, imagining what might have happened if I had only just stood up, or shut up, or told the truth, or kissed the girl. Even now, almost two decades later, my mind occasionally wanders back to those moments from my youth and I wonder “what if?” And I know I’m not alone.

There’s never been a more complicated time to be a teenager than right now. This generation is facing a future that is anything but certain; the spectre of climate change, the pressures of social media, the rise of school shootings—the list goes on and on. I want to tell a story that treats the choices teens make every day with the importance to match what it feels like in the moment, without condescension or the benefit of hindsight. A story that digs a layer deeper than your average high school drama. One that asks big, interesting questions—about destiny, growing up, and the weight of our choices—and hopefully finds some compelling answers along the way. Because these moments, these struggles, these anxieties teenagers go through, that we all went through, are real. And they shape the rest of our lives.

TEN YEARS AGO…

CONSTANCE NEGRA, one of the brightest tech minds of her generation, vanishes without a trace. The police investigation turns up no leads, names no suspects, and the spotlight on the sleepy town of Oak Harbor, WA quickly fades. In the years that follow the company Constance worked for, Max Industries, transforms from a mid-sized software developer into the largest consumer technology company in the world. And in the process, elevates its founder EZRA MAX to heights of power and influence no person has ever reached.

TODAY…

ASTER NEGRA, Constance’s 15-year-old daughter, discovers a Max Industries prototype smartphone in a secret workshop in her basement. Aster activates the prototype and is knocked unconscious by a flash of blinding light. When she wakes up, the prototype’s battery is dead and she begins hearing an unsettlingly familiar voice in her head. After the voice helps Aster avoid a dangerous accident by showing her a fragmented vision of the future, Aster decides to get help turning the prototype back on.

Aster sneaks her best friend OREN out of school and breaks into Max Industries HQ (with the help of her unpredictable new “future-vision”). There, they meet Ezra Max and learn that Constance played a much bigger role in the company than Aster ever realized. In the parking lot, Aster and Oren are intercepted by WESTLOW, a socially-awkward FBI-agent, who believes that Ezra knows more about Constance’s disappearance than he’s letting on.

That night, Aster turns the prototype back on and “meets” the voice in her head—an advanced Artificial Intelligence developed by her mother Constance called a Multiform Outcomes Manipulator (or MOM for short). MOM has the ability to show Aster possible futures, letting her to see the outcomes of different choices before she makes them; she also has Constance’s voice. With the help of MOM, Oren, and Westlow (now posing as a school lunch lady), Aster will have to stay one-step ahead of Ezra’s plans in order to discover the truth about her mother’s disappearance and maybe even save the world.

Oh, and survive high school.

SEASON ARC

Aster activates MOM and discovers her new found power. Convinced there’s more to her mother’s disappearance than she’s been told, Aster decides to take matters into her own hands. But first, she has to go back to school and face the consequences of her actions. Meanwhile, Ezra is focused on the launch of Alpha, the secret project linked to Constance’s disappearance and the mysterious Black Obelisk—another advanced AI that’s guiding Ezra’s decisions. Every action to prepare for the launch (so-called “beta-tests”) will lead to various crises that Aster must solve; like when the football team gets their hands on steroids containing high-tech nano-bots and Aster is forced to save Oak Harbor’s hated rivals from certain annihilation.

The show takes on a bright, bouncy, episodic feel. Aster, with the help of Oren and Westlow, tackles crisis after crisis, developing her abilities and her relationship with MOM. Before long, Aster begins to realize that every the crisis they’ve faced ties back to Max Industries and the launch of Alpha. But just as she’s about to put the final piece of the puzzle together…

Alpha launches and the world is thrust into chaos. 

The systems people rely on everyday—their phones, the internet, the electrical grid—become increasingly unreliable and even dangerous. People disappear under mysterious circumstances. Strange accidents happen. Aster finds herself at the center of a conspiracy unfolding all around her. Trusted teachers turn on her, revealing themselves to have been Max Industries agents all along. Life in Oak Harbor begins to break down and we shift into an increasingly dystopian world.

As things look their darkest, a massive energy burst at Max Industries campus draws Aster, Oren, and Westlow in to investigate. This is our showdown, a multi-episode confrontation at the now-abandoned Max Industries HQ. After defeating Ezra, Aster confronts the Black Obelisk and strikes a deal: If Aster surrenders MOM, the Black Obelisk will use their combined power to send her to an alternate version of the present where Constance is alive and the tragic event of the last year never happened. Our season ends with Aster stepping inside the Black Obelisk and disappearing in a flash of light.  

EPISODE STRUCTURE

Episodes will be grounded in an episodic, monster-of-the-week format similar to The X-files or Buffy, while still leaving space for serialized plotlines that span the entire season.

A-plots will focus on Aster, with the help of Oren and Westlow, facing some kind of technology-driven crisis at the high school or in the broader Oak Harbor community.

B-plots will serve as a look into the other side of the chess match by revealing Ezra’s world at Max Industries and teasing out various power-struggles within the organization. Every crisis Aster faces will somehow be connected to Ezra’s work at Max Industries and the launch of Alpha.

C-plots, when they appear, will provide a deeper dive into a supporting character or take us back in time to see part of Constance's story in the days before her disappearance.

SERIALIZED PLOTLINES

While each episode will feature a different challenge for Aster and her band of misfits to overcome, there will be key narratives we follow throughout the season.

Aster and Oren’s relationship is not a “will they or won’t they” situation in the romantic sense. The season’s primary emotional driver will be whether or not their friendship can survive the Aster’s new powers and the survive the pressures of high school and growing up.

Who is Westlow, exactly? Our former-FBI agent turned lunch lady has a complicated and dark past. We’ll spend season one uncovering her motivations for helping Aster while learning more about her backstory and her connection to Constance.  

Constance and Ezra’s relationship is the key to the central mystery in our show. Through flashbacks and digital artifacts, we’ll uncover what happened between Ezra and Constance leading up to her disappearance ten years ago.

Residents of Whidbey Island vs. Max Industries HQ is a battle that’s been raging for years. An activist group called the Whidbey Island Conservation Action (WICA) have been gathering evidence of Max Industries’ shadowy dealings and strange activity for almost a decade.

ONE GIRL IN ALL THE WORLD.

ASTER is a high-school outsider in self-imposed exile. She’s the girl everyone at school knows by name but can’t tell you anything concrete about, and honestly, she prefers it that way. She’s bright, quick-witted, and brash. And also fragile, with anxiety that manifests in anger and sometimes violence. Like a wounded animal, Aster’s pain can make her dangerous to those who try to get close—though not many have tried. She has an unwavering sense of justice that often develops in those who’ve had parents so unjustly taken from them at a young age. She prefers to see the world as black and white; the grey is much too painful.

EVERY GIRL NEEDS HER MOM.

An AI so advanced it feels like it has a soul. Maybe she does.

MOM was programmed by and modeled after Constance (Aster’s real mom) and often finds herself “mothering” Aster beyond helping her to manipulate the future. She’s the literal voice inside Aster’s head, playing the role of nagging conscious and occasional confidant. The futures MOM reveals to Aster are curated from (quite literally) a potentially infinite number of possibilities based on Aster’s goals in any given moment. MOM does not show Aster everything and may choose to hide certain futures from Aster for her own reasons. 

KEEP YOUR FRIENDS CLOSE…

…AND YOUR ENEMIES CLOSER.

PARENTS JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND.

WHIDBEY ISLAND, WA

A large island about 30 miles north of downtown Seattle, Whidbey Island is only accessible by municipal ferry at its southern point and by a single bridge across the aptly named Deception Pass from the north. It’s home to a few small communities, farmland, and wide swaths of untouched nature. In the northernmost part of the island is Oak Harbor, the largest community on the island and home to an active naval base. 

In the world of Modal, Whidbey Island and Oak Harbor have been radically transformed by the presence of Max Industries HQ, a massive tech campus (in the style of Google’s “Googleplex” campus in Mountain View, CA) built just outside Oak Harbor that is home to over ten thousand Max Industries employees. 

The history of the development of Max Industries HQ weighs heavily on the community. After Max Industries began to outgrow it’s Seattle HQ, Ezra Max set his sights on Whidbey Island, the childhood home of Constance (Aster’s mom) as the location of his new campus. The fight between local activists and Max Industries was fierce, but ultimately the construction was completed in 2014. When the HQ opened it nearly doubled the population in Oak Harbor and tripled the median income. 

Oak Harbor High School is a reflection of the tensions within the town, where the wealthy children of Max Industries VPs attend class with the children of Navy mechanics and farmers.  

Eyes are said to be the windows to the soul, but in our story they’re two-way mirrors that allow us to look inside Aster’s mind. 

REFLECTIONS are our show’s big set-piece. Imagine a cross between a dream sequence and a visit to the holodeck in Star Trek—Aster watches possible futures unfold as an invisible spectator and then uses the information she gains in order to inform her decisions back in the real world. As Aster’s abilities are honed, she’ll be able to manipulate the experience within the reflection—pausing, adjusting variables, and replaying specific moments. It’s kind of like she’s Neo, but the Matrix is entirely inside her head.   

From a functional standpoint, not every use of MOM’s abilities will call for a full reflection sequence. We’ll develop a rich visual shorthand that indicates moments where MOM is guiding Aster, whether it’s a flutter of the eyelids, distinct SFX, or a multiple exposure technique.  

In SEASON TWO, Aster wakes up with no memory of her previous timeline (and without MOM) and finds herself living the life she had always dreamed of. Constance is alive and at home. Hector is a successful musician. Aster is popular and well-liked by her peers at school. But we soon discover there’s something terribly wrong with who Aster has turned out to be. She’s cruel, entitled, and unhappy. Oren and her don’t speak. Westlow is locked away in an institution. Max Industries still exists, and with Constance still by his side, Ezra is more dangerous than ever before. 

Then Aster meets RHEA, the new girl at school who will help guide her back to her true self, and eventually, back to her true reality. Once back where she belongs, Aster must form an alliance with Ezra in order to stop the Black Obelisk from destroying everything she’s ever loved.