Robert Livingstone
Screenwriter
Movies and Series
After the world emerges from a nuclear war that plunged it into a new dark age, two scientists lead a mission to Mars to recover advanced technology essential to Earth’s survival—technology that terraformed Mars 100 years earlier—with the challenge of confronting a significantly advanced society.
In 2121, a colony of scientists on Mars began the terraforming process.
On Earth, a nuclear war plunged the world into a new dark age. Pockets of survivors, separated by a toxic landscape, struggled to cope with a new reality.
Worse, the medical/technical advances that had drastically increased human lifespan—many to the age of 250 years or more—were lost to all but a few, the few who had the foreknowledge and ability to seek refuge in a facility built for survival.
On Mars, it was the opposite situation.
Mars flourished. Cities were built. The population of the original 500 scientists grew almost exponentially since they realized they might be humanity’s only hope, given the situation on Earth.
Earth eventually clawed its way back to roughly where it had been in 2121. This, however, was one hundred years later.
Earth’s leaders planned a mission to Mars to recover the terraforming technology that was now essential to Earth’s recovery.
They realized that Mars’ colonists had continued to evolve in technological terms. They had no idea what to expect.
The series will move from one era to another, and from one world to another, to follow different storylines: the original mission to Mars, the terraforming, the introduction of genetically engineered wildlife, the drama arising out of the challenges they face; and on Earth, after the war, with characters who struggle to survive and to communicate with other survivors. And finally, the mission to recover the much needed terraforming technology with the trepidation of not knowing what to expect on Mars with a population so far advanced.
Pilot is finished plus a Pitch Bible for the 5-season series.
A young boy in an affluent Jewish family in Warsaw becomes a resistance fighter after the Germans invade Poland and his family loses everything: the untold story about the Jews who fought back.
Based on a true story, adapted from a book by D.W. Duke. I ended up writing a script for an 8-part, 8-hour series
because so much great stuff in the book had to be left out to get it down to movie length.
It is September 1, 1939, when Germany invades Poland and transforms eight-year-old Casimir Bieberstein’s world forever.
The son of a wealthy Jewish businessman, Cass lives a happy life in a thirty-room mansion. But when his family is forcibly ejected from their opulent and luxurious existence, Cass is immersed in a dark life he never could have envisioned in his wildest dreams.
After moving from one apartment to the next, Cass and his family are eventually forced into the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw nearly three years later. Cass, who is seeking justice and the neutralization of Arturo, a spy for the Germans, responds in the only way he knows and becomes a sniper for the Jewish Resistance. As
battles lead him to fight in the 1943 and 1944 uprisings as well as with the Soviet Army when they finally drive Germany out of Poland, Cass ultimately turns the tables on his oppressors and becomes a shining example of the inner-strength and determination of the Jewish people to never give up, no matter what.
Not without a Fight is
the true story of a Polish Jew’s journey to become a Resistance Fighter
intent on seeking justice for wrongs while attempting to survive the atrocities of the Holocaust.
An 8-part, 8-hour limited series.
Script is finished for all 8 episodes.
A bookie forces a college genius to use his secret scientific discovery to win football games to pay off his coach/father’s gambling debt.
Matt Jenson, a 21-year-old college senior, discovers how to make himself extraordinarily fast by manipulating his molecular system.
Matt’s father is the head coach of the football team. He gambles. He’s in deep to a bookie. When the bookie, Sid Leone, discovers the kid’s secret, he forces him to use his enhanced speed to win football games.
A rouge agent in a covert government agency also finds out about him—through one of Matt’s professors—and schemes to get his hands on his discovery.
After a few games, Matt discovers his speed is waning; his “charges” last for shorter and shorter periods of time; his playing is erratic. He tells Sid he can’t guarantee a win in the final game, so the bookie and his gangster associates decide to bet against the team.
Then a cheerleader Matt had a fling with—who saw him with Sid, who she knows is a bookie—accuses him of trying to throw games. She tells him that if the team loses the final game, she will expose him. He’s in a dilemma. Win or lose, he loses.
Matt has developed a relationship with the girl next door, the girl of his dreams. The gangsters kidnap her to ensure that Matt doesn’t change his mind about the last game. Matt goes after her.
Matt’s father confesses his gambling. Tells Matt he is resigning as head coach after the final game.
Matt goes into the championship game without his special powers. Can he somehow rally the team to win anyway?
After the game, Matt’s father is killed. The gun the killers used is placed in the father’s hand; a confession letter he wrote is on his desk. To the authorities, it’s a suicide. Matt believes otherwise. He thinks the bookie or his gangster associates killed his father. Or was it the rouge agent?
When Matt begins to suspect that possibility, he devises a strategy to bring all his adversaries together.
Feature film. Script is finished
Looking for solutions to the problems of crime, political gridlock and a crippled economy, Americans embrace the candidate’s message of family values and economic stability. They don’t see it coming: the agenda that will deliver on the promises, a form of government they’ve never known. Fascism.
The Next President is a political thriller about a charismatic candidate who espouses an attractively packaged fascist doctrine.
It is also a love story, with complications. Catherine Cortez, the protagonist, a top news anchor at a major network, is in a relationship with a U.S. senator. He’s asked her to marry him. She resists because she sees marriage to him as a career-killer—which is part of her motivation to get out from behind the news desk and go after one last big story.
Cortez follows one story—a revolution in Cuba—and discovers a bigger one in the presidential candidate, who as senate majority leader, with ties to the military and the CIA, is behind the supply of illegal arms to the corrupt fascist government in Cuba.
In her pursuit, she puts her father’s life at risk—the father she didn’t know was still alive, the father she rediscovers in Cuba.
The ending is ominous.
Note: I wrote The Next President long before Donald Trump emerged on the political scene. When he did, I shelved the script. The similarity between Trump and one of my main characters was superficial at best, but nonetheless I knew that people would see Francis Ellesworth as a disguised Donald Trump. Such is clearly not the case. Trump aspired to be, and perhaps was, an authoritarian leader, but he wasn’t a fascist. Ellesworth is, with a new brand of fascism packaged as a solution to many of America’s problems. When Trump is gone, The Next President may stand a chance of becoming a movie.
Feature film. Script is finished.
Executive Producer
Projects in Development, Pending Funding, as Executive Producer
Yuma City Marshal tracks down the killers of his uncle and deputy.
Director: Thadd Turner
Writers: D.J. Duncan (book)
Thadd Turner (screenplay)
Producers: Cynthia L. Turner, Thadd Turner
Executive Producer: Robert Livingstone
Cinematographer: Teddy Smith
Editor: Corky Ehlers
Four millennials struggle in their careers and decide to open a babysitting company. To grow the business, they offer the children a cut of their babysitting fees if they convince their parents to hire the company. The children’s level of business savvy proves to match their level of high jinks.
Gregory Pellerito: Writer, Director, Producer
Rob Margolies: Producer
Wain Bradley: Producer, Film Editor, Sound Designer
Robert Livingstone: Executive Producer
Tim Carney: Associate Producer
Unable to speak, young Jason meets beautiful young Ella who helps him find his voice through sign language, empowering him to battle for his life, his love, and his dream to become a rapper.
Location: New Orleans, LA
Director: Monti Sharp
Producer: Arlene Knight
Executive Producer: Robert Livingstone
Executive Producer: Monti Sharp
Line Producer: Dianne Cornell
Director of Photography: Patrick Cady
Production Coordinator: Carole Bidault d’Lisle
Principal Cast:
Academy Award Winner Marlee Matlin
Nia Long
Wendell Pierce
Contact: Robert@robertlivingstone.com