Genre: Action Heist - (novel adaptation)

Page Count: 149 pages.

Status: written on spec - looking to option

Production: medium budget 


Logline: A London-based ship broker agrees to hijack a ship and commit himself to a piracy heist to the high seas that will change his life when he sides with a Caribbean dictator to crush a communist rebellion.


Synopsis: During World War II, Heinz Warner and Gunther Kruger, two Waffen SS soldiers, are stationed in Italy. As the war deteriorates, they make a deal with a Caribbean dictator to steal twenty-four German Tiger tanks and transfer them overseas to escape the war. Instead of landing at a safe haven, they find themselves stranded and forced to lead the military operations of a dictatorship-based Portolina.

Fast-forward to 32 years later, Portolina is in the middle of a civil war against communist leader, Diego Cordoba. As an international oil embargo threatens Juan Sierra’s dictatorship, the government seeks the help of Martin Kingsley, a London ship broker and Manuel Sierra’s boarding-school classmate, to orchestrate a ship heist that will effectively end the civil war in their favor. Kingsley enlists his trusted friend, Glen Myers, to a three-long week heist across the Caribbean Sea. Despite the high-stakes nature of the mission, the men manage to deliver the much-wanted load of oil. While in Portolina, Kingsley falls in love with Juan Sierra’s daughter, Paloma, but he soon has to go back. A chase hunt begins led by Scotland Yard’s lead investigator, Peter Thornton, as Kingsley and Myers make their way back to Europe, through Curacao to Paris and finally to London. In the end, they manage to escape. Years later, Warner and Kingsley discuss the aftermath of both ship heists in a pub in Hamburg. Paloma walks in to greet her ‘Uncle Heinz’. 
 

Time & Space: The opening act takes place in Italy in 1944. The rest of the story unravels between London, Curacao, the Caribbean Sea and the fictional country of Portolina in 1976.
 

Languages: English, Spanish. 
 

Comparables: Heist films in consideration. 




The Pirates Caper is based on the novel Stone's War by Trevor Whately with federal no. © 2021 St. Albans Press Ltd. All rights reserved. ISBN 978-0-9867126-1-6