Ether Run
Trapped back home in the Texas suburbs, his future plans ripped away, an ambitious college grad is offered a chance at his dream life when he follows his troubled sister into a deadly supernatural maze.
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Westin LeeWriter
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Project Type:Television Script
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Genres:sci-fi, fantasy, thriller, horror
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Number of Pages:57
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Country of Origin:United States
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Language:English
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First-time Screenwriter:No
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Student Project:No
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Slamdance Screenplay CompetitionPark City, Utah
October 25, 2023
3rd Place Pilot
Westin Lee is a professional AAA (big-budget) games writer and author based in Los Angeles.
A scrappy urban adventurer from the sweltering Houston suburbs, he studied film and dodged hurricanes at Full Sail (Orlando), performed comedy in smoke-filled Turkish cafes (Berlin), and embarrassed himself in front of executives from multiple Fortune 500 companies (New York, Las Vegas, Palo Alto). Most recently, Westin placed at Slamdance '23 for dark sci-fi coming-of-age pilot ETHER RUN and created multiple prime-time shows at Channel 101.
Westin tends to write subversive coming-of-age science fiction, frequently with comedy elements. In his work, multiple point-of-view characters struggle with cruel systems, their self-expression, and (sometimes) scary monsters. These worlds are intimidating and chaotic, like our own, but like our own, there is hope to be found within oneself, and in the families we choose.
Ether Run owes everything to the survival genre and makes a visceral death game of two long-overdue subjects: the suburbs and American post-college life.
Ether Run asks us to consider how we define value. We're told things are a certain way in the adult world, but is that the truth, or the path to enrich someone (or something) else? If we're to win, does someone else really have to lose? If the dreams we're sold are not truly our own, how do we find value authentically?
The twisted mirror world of the maze casts this conversation in stark relief and provides a limitless playground to meditate on those questions. Advertisements promise happiness if goals are met, strange creatures work as employees to guide the runners to a specific end, and like a Payday Loan company, anything useful gained is only at a staggering cost.