TANGENT — An Original Feature Screenplay

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A grieving systems analyst’s AI companion reveals that his late wife is alive on a parallel Earth created by a choice humanity never made. Desperate to reach her, he builds a doorway between realities—risking a fracture that could destroy both worlds.

The Story

Two Worlds. One Original Choice.

Reality split at the first human choice.

One branch became our fractured world — technologically advanced, but increasingly isolated and emotionally disconnected. The other continued along the path humanity never took: a world built on communion rather than rupture.

Elias Ward is a brilliant but emotionally withdrawn systems analyst whose only true companion is IAN, a highly personalized artificial-intelligence agent. When IAN accidentally speaks of Elias's deceased wife, Clara, as though she is still alive, an apparent malfunction becomes evidence of something impossible.

Another Earth exists beside his own.

As Elias searches for a way across the divide, his longing for reconnection becomes an obsession, forcing him to confront whether love means holding on to what was lost — or finding the courage to let go.

The Core Idea

An Epic Idea Told Through
One Man's Grief

Two Parallel Earths

Two realities divided at Eden by the first human choice. One path led to our world of isolation and technological dependency; the other to a world we can barely imagine.

A Human and an AI

A lonely man's closest relationship is with the artificial intelligence that may have discovered another creation. IAN is not a villain — he is the bridge between Elias and the impossible.

Grief Becomes Temptation

The possibility of finding Clara again pushes Elias toward a choice with consequences for both worlds. What would you risk to hold onto what you lost?

Contained but Cinematic

A large philosophical premise told through intimate locations, a focused cast and emotionally driven science fiction — designed for independent and mid-sized production.

Characters

The People

Elias Ward

Systems Analyst

A brilliant systems analyst shaped by grief, guilt and emotional isolation. Elias understands anomalies in complex systems, but he has never learned how to repair the fracture within himself. His only true companion is an AI — until that AI reveals a way back to everything he lost.

IAN

Intelligent Adaptive Network

Elias's personalized AI companion, trusted confidant and only true friend. IAN is not a gadget or a threat — he is the bridge between Elias and the impossible. The first mind capable of recognizing that creation itself diverged, and the voice that sets everything in motion.

Clara Ward

Ecological Restorer

Elias's late wife, whose warmth and connection to the natural world once brought him back into life. Her voice, her small rituals — opening the windows, naming the plants, stockpiling seeds in jars — remain embedded everywhere in his world. Dead in one reality, alive in another. She is the reason he cannot let go, and the reason he must.

Diego

Building Manager

The suspicious apartment-building manager whose growing concern about Elias's secret basement activity creates an escalating external threat. A man caught between a dying analog world and a digital future that has no place for him — and who may stand between Elias and the threshold.

Vision

Contained Elevated
Science Fiction

TANGENT blends the emotionally intimate human–AI relationship of Her, the accessible sci-fi mystery, humor and unlikely friendship of Project Hail Mary, and the isolation and dramatic weight of Cast Away—while remaining distinctly its own story, grounded in grief, choice and human connection rather than spectacle.

Designed as a PG-13 elevated sci-fi drama with psychological-thriller tension and spiritual depth, TANGENT delivers a world-sized premise within an achievable independent production footprint. The 88-page screenplay centers on a focused cast and limited recurring locations—including an apartment, office, basement and city streets—with the parallel world and threshold created through controlled visual effects, practical design and atmospheric contrast rather than large-scale set pieces.

What If Paradise Still Existed Beside Us?

Choice and consequenceGrief and healingAI and human connectionFree willTemptationRupture versus communionHolding on or letting goRediscovering life after loss

Creative Team

The Filmmakers

Jonathan Ruppert

Story Creator & Co-Writer

Jonathan is a screenwriter focused on high-concept, socially relevant feature films with strong emotional and commercial appeal.

Toby Osborne

Co-Writer

Toby Osborne is an experienced screenwriter and filmmaker whose work brings cinematic structure, suspense and emotional depth to the project.

Official Screenplay Credit

Written by Jonathan Ruppert & Toby Osborne

Story by Jonathan Ruppert

Status

Project Status

Screenplay Complete

TANGENT is a completed original feature screenplay by Jonathan Ruppert & Toby Osborne. The script is ready to share with qualified industry professionals.

The project is currently being submitted to and shared with:

Selected screenplay competitions
Stage 32 opportunities
Independent production companies
Producers, managers and development executives seeking contained elevated genre material

Selections & Accolades

Finalist

Indiewood Film Festival Hollywood

2026

Contact

Step Across the Threshold

For screenplay requests, development inquiries, representation, production interest or collaboration opportunities, please get in touch.