Sister Mary

The script received a "Consider" from Selling Your Screenplay.

This is "Two Mules for Sister Sara" meets "Lady Bird". I’ll start by saying that I know that some of the comps aren’t exactly the most recent films… but that’s precisely why I wrote this project. As a Western fan, I think that it’s been quite a while since we saw a truly great Western comedy – and even more when it comes to Western comedies starring women. While it could be argued that Western per se isn’t the most popular genre among young female viewers, I do believe that with the right approach, a project like this could find a decent audience. After all, period pieces such as Emma, Anne with an E, or Bridgerton are solid evidence that viewers enjoy following the adventures of young female characters set in another time, while The Englishman, Meek’s Cutoff, or even 1883 show that the market is in search for western projects starring women. Now, I know, some of these projects seem targeted to a limited audience, so, how do we reach a wider one? Well, we create a story that combines all the fun parts of a Western comedy with what the market is demanding. That is: a western that has action, laughs, and a female protagonist trying to discover who she is. Ergo, Sister Mary.

Sister Mary’s premise might come across as a crazy adventure – and it is, but it is way more than that. While the project certainly has its fair share of action sequences and comedic elements, at its core, it’s about a young woman whose life has forced her to take the way of the church but isn’t quite sure if this is what she wants to be. She’s the kind of girl that instead of reading the Bible is reading an adventure book. I think we all know that kind of person. That one girl who comes from a deeply religious household but doesn’t share the same enthusiasm towards religion and is full of doubts. I know I do. I live in a deeply religious city and every girl I have met here comes from that kind of experience and they don’t always end up becoming religious. Heck! Some of them ended up becoming Wiccans – but that’s a whole different story. The point is that, in the case of Sister Mary, she’s a young woman who finds asking herself if she really feels “the call” or if she wants something else, and what could this be. And so, as the story goes on and she is faced with some difficult decisions, she comes to realize that she doesn’t want to spend her life in a church or convent, but rather, that she wants to have adventures, and by the end of the film we see her becoming this sort of outlaw ala Jesse James or Billy the Kid.

So, this project is a lot of things. It’s a Western adventure, it’s a comedy, it’s a coming-of-age story… and since the antagonist is a politician who is employing a gang to create fear among society and show himself as the hero, it can even be perceived as a movie with social commentary. There is just a lot to look at in Sister Mary. For young female viewers, a coming-of-age adventure. For Western fans, an explosive Western comedy. And for religious viewers, a balanced story that neither criticizes nor celebrates religion, but simply accept people’s beliefs in a respectful way like Sister Act once did. In conclusion, Sister Mary is the kind of comedy that this generation needs.