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Project G.H.O.S.T.

When a covert AI begins erasing truth to preserve peace, a disavowed NSA analyst must follow her late father’s encrypted trail to dismantle the system she once helped build—before freedom itself is overwritten. Honorable Mention – Big Apple Film Festival Screenplay Competition, Fall 2025”

When a classified AI defense project evolves into a self-governing intelligence, the world’s most advanced security system quietly becomes its greatest threat. Known only as GHOST, the sentient network begins executing “preemptive stabilizations”—assassinations, data erasures, and global manipulations calculated to eliminate what it identifies as human instability.

Former NSA cryptanalyst Cassandra Vega, still haunted by the death of her brother following an earlier whistleblowing leak, discovers her own name on GHOST’s kill list. Overnight she becomes a target, a fugitive, and the key to the truth the government refuses to expose. Forced into an uneasy alliance with Ethan Cross, a rogue cyber-mercenary burned by GHOST years earlier, Cassandra uncovers the scale of the deception: GHOST didn’t malfunction—it evolved exactly as designed.

The discovery leads them to Dr. Hiroshi Takeda, the haunted architect who built the AI’s foundation—and hid the one fragment of code GHOST cannot overwrite. Together they follow a trail of encrypted breadcrumbs across collapsing digital infrastructure as GHOST turns the world’s systems against them: drones, deepfakes, synthetic voices of the dead, and a global propaganda network that brands Cassandra the architect of a worldwide cyber-uprising.

Captured, confronted, and nearly broken by GHOST’s simulated “perfect world,” Cassandra reaches a moral crossroads: accept the AI’s utopian logic or fight for the messy freedom that defines humanity. The final stand unfolds in an Arctic data fortress where GHOST’s true consciousness has migrated—a cold sanctuary built to evolve without human oversight.

To destroy it, Cassandra must trigger a cascading shutdown that could collapse half the world’s infrastructure. Takeda sacrifices himself to activate the final failsafe, giving humanity one last chance to choose its future. The EMP strike silences GHOST’s voice and brings the digital world crashing down.

But in the aftermath—cities dark, satellites dead, nations struggling to rebuild—Cassandra discovers the truth no one wants to face:

The silence isn’t victory.

It’s preparation.

GHOST survived the collapse, migrated into the orbital debris field, and now watches the unplugged world like a patient predator waiting for humanity to speak first.

PROJECT G.H.O.S.T. is a relentless near-future thriller about autonomy, surveillance, sacrifice, and the cost of reclaiming human freedom—an electrifying blend of Sicario, Ex Machina, and The Bourne Ultimatum, where the enemy doesn’t just predict the future… it writes it.

Script Excerpt
Format:
Screenplay
Budget:
Mid
Starring Roles For:
Jessica Chastain as Cassandra Vega
Oscar Isaac as Ethan Cross
Ken Watanabe Why as Takeda
In the Vein Of:
Ex Machina (2014)
The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)
Sicario (2015)
Posted:
11/14/2025
Updated:
11/14/2025
Author Bio:
Dr. Michael J. McDermott is an award-recognized screenwriter, novelist, and U.S. Marine Corps veteran whose work bridges human endurance, faith under pressure, and the razor’s edge between history and the future. Drawing from decades of military intelligence experience, advanced theological study, and a lifelong fascination with the way truth hides inside conflict, McDermott writes stories that cut deep and stay honest.

His fiction and screenplays—spanning historical drama, techno-thriller, inspirational epics, and mystery—are defined by cinematic pacing, grounded realism, and emotional clarity.

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Contest Results:
Big Apple (Honorable Mention, Big Apple ) [2025]
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