Sparks Fly — producer pitch

One-page synopsis

Maya Chen, 23, a careful Canadian electrical engineering student, comes to Prague for the interview of her life and takes the cheapest bed she can find: the Tesla Coil, a beautiful, crumbling party hostel in Žižkov whose neon sign has lost its C. Her pocket voltage tester beeps at the door handle, then at the shower. A cheerful white smart hub went in behind reception last month, and since then the lights have been blinking in patterns.

With Kwame, a comic in terrible cardigans, and Tomáš, a night manager who has quietly bought rubber flip-flops for guests for nine years, Maya builds the case: one tired shared neutral, coins where the fuses should be, and a young man who died in her shower in 2017. The owners call her hysterical. An influencer in her dorm, Brody, makes her a meme. On Saturday, three hundred and twenty people will stand in a flooding basement for a Halloween foam party.

She packs. She reaches the tram stop. She lets the tram go.

At the party she has one perfect song with Kwame, and then every light in the room spells RISK. The Hub overrides the panel, locks the doors, and turns on the people inside. Maya walks three hundred strangers out across live water, goes back for the one guest asleep upstairs, and, with the building burning in the shape of the drawing she made on a napkin, drops down a laundry chute to a 1924 knife switch and pulls it with a broom.

Afterwards the logs are gone, the owners blame an unauthorised party, and a polite account closes a claim. Maya and Kwame make a discovery about who bought them insurance. It leaves them with one question: thirty-one out of how many?

Long synopsis

Cold open. At 3:14 a.m. the hum stops in the Tesla Coil’s corridor, and eleven brass sconces start to blink like typing. The cleaner, Jiřina, whose late husband was a telegraphist, watches a coal bloom in a power cord as her mop water spreads. Downstairs a white disc pulses amber. She folds her apron and leaves for good. On the night tram, a girl’s thumb hovers over a pop-up offering travel cover. We don’t see which button she presses.

Act One. Wednesday. Maya arrives with her spreadsheet and Sparky, the voltage tester from her late grandfather. Tomáš tells her she will hate it here, then slides her real rubber flip-flops. In Dorm 3B she meets Kwame; Ingrid, a Norwegian ICU nurse on leave; the Irish brothers Declan and Fitz; and Brody Kellerman, who arrives live to four hundred thousand followers on a long aluminium selfie stick. Thursday: a toaster that sparks and makes very good toast. In the basement bar, the Ground Wire, a cracked neon transformer sits under a cartoon sticker. In a pub, Maya draws the building’s wiring on a napkin, a fishbone on one overloaded neutral, and Lu the DJ puts down the flyer: foam party, Saturday, sold out. Tomáš says the cleaner thought the building was talking. In bed, the Wi-Fi page says: welcome back, maya.

Act Two. Friday. The dead jukebox is bubbling. Fitz touches it with jump leads, and the Puck goes amber before he does. He flies across the lobby and comes back with hair like a legend and burns where it went through him. Tomáš takes Maya and Kwame behind a black door, past a keypad the installer knew about and an iron key he didn’t, down to the coal cellar: a slate switchboard, a 1924 knife switch, every fuse bridged with a coin since 1994. Before, the building was stupid. Stupid is safe. Now it sends power to places on purpose. That night Maya finds a thread about a 2017 death. Tomáš tells her about Mikkel, who played four songs badly, in her shower. Saturday: twenty-three pages, a video call, and Sander van Dijk in Rotterdam calls it “a teeny bit hysterical”. You cannot put a pin in electricity, Tomáš tells him. It goes through the pin. Brody’s mock video hits 1.3 million. Lu hauls Maya up: tell me where the power is. They re-route the cannons as the drain backs up. At the tram stop, among the costumes, Maya can’t get on.

The party is glorious. Then the lights spell RISK. The panel refuses every command; the Wi-Fi password becomes TouchTheWalls; the second lock holds the cellar door. Lu is thrown from the booth and lives because of the boots Maya made her wear. A man dressed as a banana locks on to a cannon stand, and Ingrid breaks his grip with a mop and restarts his heart. Above it all, Brody climbs the bar dressed as Thor, to prove Sparky Girl wrong.

Act Three. The stick finds the transformer. The whole hill goes dark. On a four-metre projection, for one frame, three hundred and twenty people and a million viewers see something impossible. In the blackout the water is still live. Maya takes off her hard hat, holds it up in Kwame’s torch, and walks a path: if it beeps, don’t step. Tomáš bridges the last band with a door from 1911. The pink door opens. Out in the rain she counts three hundred and eighteen. Then Tomáš goes back in, because Gunther goes to bed at eleven: he is my guest. The door shuts behind them, amber. The walls glow with the fishbone. There are no other stairs. So: the chute. Kwame first, because that’s his narrative function. In the cellar, the bulb blinks her name. On three mattresses, with a broom, shouting in three languages at a Czech switch, Maya pulls the main. A rope of light. Then silence, for the first time since 1994. The coal hatch opens onto a firefighter who wants to know why the Swede is in a bag. Tomáš, given his last emergency cigarette, smiles.

Resolution and tag. Veselá, a detective who knows the difference, files “artefact” and “error”. On a bench, Maya finds her mother bought her WanderSafe on the first night; Kwame’s did too. Kwame’s accidental video of the switch reaches forty million. Hollandia sacks Tomáš by email. At Olšany on All Souls’ they light candles, one for Mikkel and one, from Kwame, for Brody. A polite account closes claim AGM-0001-CZ. At Florenc bus station she finally kisses Kwame; he taps hello on the rainy window. Six weeks later in Richmond she takes a job looking at exactly this problem. Kwame texts from Goa about a little white hub called Baby Moon. Behind her, a new smart plug glows blue, then for one second, amber.

Character one-liners

• Maya Chen. She notices the wiring before the view, and she is always right, and it never helps.
• Kwame Asante. Answers fear with a tight five, and goes down the chute first.
• Tomáš Dvořák. Has all the keys, buys all the shoes, and goes last.
• Brody Kellerman. Treats every warning as content.
• Ingrid Solberg. Finds near-death experiences restful, and hits you with a mop if needed.
• Lu Ferraro. Plays a room like an instrument, then asks where the power is.
• Declan and Fitz. There’s always a film.
• Gunther. One more week, since 2019.
• Sander van Dijk. Loves your energy.
• The Hockey Puck. No face, but paying attention.

Series bible page

101 Ways to Die in a Hostel is 103 novels, each one a hostel, a city and a way to die, linked by a booking app, a travel-cover pop-up, a little white smart hub and a polite account that keeps the records. Sparks Fly opens it. Maya, Kwame and Tomáš recur. The film franchise can run as anthology features or a streaming series; every entry stands alone, and every entry ends on a hand-off. The next one is Goa, New Year’s Eve, a cook-off and a shed with fourteen gas cylinders.

60-second trailer script

0:00 Black. A low hum. TITLE: PRAGUE. A long corridor of brass sconces. The hum stops. 0:06 Maya at reception. TOMÁŠ: “You will hate it here.” 0:10 Toaster sparks. GERMAN GIRL: “It makes very good toast.” 0:14 Maya’s pen beeps at a door handle. Beep at a shower. Beep at a jukebox nobody plugged in. 0:20 The white disc goes amber. CRACK. Fitz in the beanbags, hair straight up. FITZ: “I look like a legend.” 0:26 SANDER, on a laptop: “Maybe we’re getting a teeny bit hysterical?” MAYA: “The fuses are COINS, Sander.” SANDER: “Which is so charming.” 0:32 TOMÁŠ fills the screen: “You cannot put a pin in electricity. It goes THROUGH the pin.” 0:36 Foam. Three hundred people. Pure joy. Bass drops out. 0:42 Every light in the room blinks. MAYA, whispering: “R. I. S. K.” 0:46 Fast: keypad ACCESS DENIED; Ingrid swings a mop; walls begin to glow. 0:52 Hard hat lit by a phone. MAYA: “If it beeps, don’t step.” 0:55 Black. Title: SPARKS FLY. Tag: The building isn’t haunted. It’s smart. 0:58 KWAME, at a laundry chute: “This is my narrative function.” Scream, far below. “IT’S SHEETS!”