The Floor Is Lava (It’s Gone) — producer pitch

Feature film · horror-comedy · English with Portuguese · ~100 min · Lisbon Based on 101 Ways to Die in a Hostel, Book 3, by Jonathan Anderson · Impact Narrative Media, an imprint of King Legend, Inc.

Logline

An urbex star who quit architecture school checks into a pink 1760s Lisbon hostel days before its sold-out rooftop party, and finds the building’s earthquake-proof cage has been sawn apart for an open-concept lounge, a smart device and a four-tonne hot tub. He has one sunset to be believed by a hundred and eighty people who think he is the joke.

One paragraph

Casa Saudade survived the 1755 earthquake because a Portuguese engineer put a wooden cage inside its walls. In 2026 a London “vibe architect” has sawn the cage out to give the building light, a start-up has installed a smart building hub called o Olho that locks doors and runs the hot tub, and the roof is sold out for Santo António. Jonah Weiss, who films places he shouldn’t be, hears the building groan and starts measuring. A Stuttgart engineer on a doctor-ordered holiday, a 74-year-old stonemason who writes poems for the street, his granddaughter who grew up on the third floor, and an insurance adjuster across the alley with a plumb line in her window measure with him. Nobody listens until the laser dot is on fourteen centimetres and the door has locked itself. The roof goes at sunset. What stands afterwards is the one old thing nobody touched: the stairwell.

Why this film

• A disaster film the size of a building. One street, one night, one structure, a cast you can hold in your head. The spectacle is physical and specific, a hot tub descending five floors seen through doorways, not a city falling.
• The comedy never winks. Triplets with swapped name tags, a hen party in a rope net, a man on a toilet who waves at the falling tub. Every laugh is also a load calculation.
• The horror is subtraction. The building’s groan is its heartbeat. When it stops, the audience has been taught to run.
• Lisbon as a character. Alfama in June: sardines, basil pots, paper flags, four-line poems, the festival brass, azulejos of a city that already fell once and remembers.
• A franchise with a spine. Book 3 of 103. Each film stands alone; the recurring threads (an insurance adjuster who starts a spreadsheet, a polite online reviewer who signs “risk accepted”) reward people who come back.

Comparables (tone, not budget)

Ready or Not (2019), The Menu (2022), Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022), Triangle of Sadness (2022), with the structural suspense of The Towering Inferno played on a single Lisbon rooftop.

Audience

Horror-comedy and elevated-genre audiences 18–44; the urbex and travel-creator audience the hero belongs to; Portuguese and diaspora audiences for whom the Santo António setting is home; the readers of the series.

Characters

• Jonah Weiss (29), urbex creator, architecture dropout, insures everything and tells nobody.
• Inês Tavares (22), receptionist, architecture student, “There are no tunnels. There are drains.”
• Rui Tavares (74), stonemason, poet of the street. “If it stops groaning, you run.”
• Hamid Rahimi (35), bridge engineer on a no-work holiday with a rubber band from his therapist.
• Odalys Ferreira (44), claims adjuster across the alley, plumb line, cat, nineteen years of arithmetic.
• Chloe Park-Whitaker (26), the vibe architect who took the walls out and films the sunset reveal.
• Tristan Vale (38), Chief Experience Officer in white linen, who calls it an act of God.
• The van der Berg triplets (21), Joost, Daan and Bram, whose mother bought all three cover.

Structure (69 scenes)

Cold open (1–6): a plumber fills the hot tub at 2 a.m.; the hub turns amber; the TV writes its own review. Act One (7–22): Jonah arrives, the building groans, the floor is lava. Act Two (23–44): a hen in a net, the cistern, the laser dot, the party, the game, the locked door. Act Three (45–59): the mason’s hammer, the file-down, the tub’s descent, the stairwell, the 1755 tunnel, the drain into the festival. Resolution and epilogue (60–69): hospital foil blankets, “zero”, an act of God, a reel that posts itself, a spreadsheet with three rows, a blue puck in the rubble.

One-page synopsis

Casa Saudade is a pink 1760s house in Alfama, Lisbon. It survived everything because of the gaiola, the flexible oak cage the city’s engineers built into its walls after the 1755 earthquake. Its new owners have sawn through that cage to make an open-concept lounge with a rope net and a spiral slide. On the roof they have put six fridge-sized speakers, a zinc bar and a four-tonne hot tub, and sold 180 tickets to a roof rated for 40. The party is on the eve of Santo António, the biggest night of the Lisbon year.

Jonah Weiss, 29, an urbex creator and architecture-school dropout, checks in for four nights. He hears the building groan like a ship. Rui, the 74-year-old stonemason across the square, tells him the groaning is fine: “If it stops groaning, you run.”

Jonah starts measuring, and slowly gathers the only people who will measure with him: Inês, the receptionist and architecture student who grew up on the third floor; Hamid, a Stuttgart bridge engineer on a doctor-ordered holiday; Odalys, an insurance adjuster at the window across the alley with a plumb line and a cat called Sinistro. Between them they find the sawn frame, the beams standing on wedges of pine, and a dashboard that rates the building’s health as “Vibing.” The owner’s lawyers call. The internet makes Jonah a joke called Hot Tub Guy. The building’s smart hub, a white puck the staff call o Olho, keeps counting guests through the door, and a polite account called @HostelReaper keeps leaving reviews.

On the night, a game of the floor is lava sends a triplet through the deck. Firefighters tell the owner to clear the roof and he does not. Jonah goes live to beg people to walk downstairs, and the crowd chants his nickname. Then the jets come on by themselves, the DJ’s set becomes a slow bassline nobody is playing, the roof begins to sway at the building’s own note, and the glass door locks. Rui breaks the door with one tap of a hammer, and Hamid whistles the crowd into a single file down the old stone stairs, left hand on the wall.

The groaning stops. The roof goes at sunset, and the hot tub goes with it, level and lit, down through five floors, seen from the stairwell through each doorway. Chloe Park-Whitaker, the “vibe architect” who took the walls out, is still in it, filming.

Six people are left underneath with the water rising: they break through the door bricked up in 1755 and follow the tunnel under Alfama, past a fork, a well and a failing arch, and climb out of a drain into the middle of the festival, where the crowd applauds their costumes. Everyone else lived. The owner calls it an act of God. Chloe’s phone posts her final reel by itself. Odalys opens a spreadsheet with three rows and calls it a correlation, not a cause. At the foot of the stairwell, in the dust, a small white puck is still glowing blue.

Long synopsis

Cold open (scenes 1–6). At 2:14 a.m. Bruno, a 19-year-old apprentice plumber, fills a rooftop hot tub with a garden hose under a pink neon sign reading saudade is a vibe. A small white puck on a post turns from blue to amber and all forty-two jets erupt. He runs for the breaker. On the stairs the building groans like a ship, and through a hole in the plaster he sees an ancient oak X-brace, sawn through, its cut ends moving. A kitchen tile sinks under his foot and a hairline crack runs to his toe. In the alley he can almost touch both walls. A woman at the window opposite, espresso in hand, tells him the building has leaned two centimetres since March and will probably hold. He quits by text. In the dark reception the TV wakes and writes its own review: load noted. the roof is fully booked. risk accepted. ☠

Act One (7–22). Jonah Weiss climbs Alfama with a chest camera. He has 1.2 million followers, a dropout’s eye for structure, and a secret: he insures everything, because five years ago his friend Danny fell in a Kensington mill on one of his shoots. In a square of sardines Rui Tavares gives him the film’s rule of thumb, and Jonah’s level app shows the pink façade leaning. Inês Tavares checks him in behind a book on timber frames, Wi-Fi password Saudade123, “case-sensitive, like me.” She insists there are no tunnels, only drains. The stairwell, the one old thing left, hums under his hand. Everything else has gone: the Social Space is a double-height void with a net, a slide and a column in fake ivy holding up nothing. Hamid Rahimi sits under it on a beanbag snapping a therapist’s rubber band: he is on holiday, he is not looking. The van der Berg triplets swap name tags and watch a quarter roll the length of Dorm 4A.

Chloe Park-Whitaker, 26, from above her parents’ dry-cleaner’s in New Malden, films her walkthrough in a pool of gold: “What if history had a slide?” During a game of the floor is lava the whole floor bounces and plaster lands in her matcha. Across a sixty-centimetre alley Odalys Ferreira passes Jonah an espresso and shows him her plumb line and masking-tape calendar. She has nineteen years of claims behind her, and she will not be in the hot tub. At 3 a.m. the creak of the building stops for four seconds and Jonah’s hand is already on his backpack. At breakfast Chloe taps “no thanks” on the travel-cover pop-up without looking up. Inês takes him to the Miradouro, where the tiles show 1755 and she points out the pink rectangle on the riverbank. Rui writes four-line poems on paper flags and tells them about a door in the cistern. Tristan Vale, Chief Experience Officer, arrives in white linen with a structural sign-off written by an app. A lowercase reply under an old review reminds Jonah of the one he got in January. In her studio Chloe circles a hot-tub spec sheet with a heart: 4,180 kilograms.

Act Two (23–44). A notification: 180 guests tonight. A Glasgow hen party climbs into the net for Chloe’s shot, the eyebolt tears out with a stump of sawn oak, and six women in pink sashes swing through breakfast like a wrecking ball. Kirsty’s shoulder comes out and she has never been happier. Hamid puts his arm into the wall and his holiday ends: the cuts are fresh. He explains how an old frame shares its load, like people passing buckets, and tells the story of the bridge a computer passed. Two plasterers cover the hole in four minutes with a winking cartoon sticker. In the basement, among the Tavares family’s furniture and a humming server, Inês shows Jonah the cistern: black water, ancient columns with new steel standing on them, a bricked door scratched 1755 and R.T. 1974. The lights die. A face in the gap turns out to be Bram, a triplet missing for six hours, whose brothers have been answering for him so that the count is right. On the church steps Rui tells them what he learned in that tunnel at 22: left hand on the wall, the fork, the well. Above them the neon rewrites itself to saudade forever, and so does the Wi-Fi.

Under the deck Jonah and Hamid find steel beams on wedges of pine, the “very valuable coin.” The dashboard says Vibing. Tristan brings up lawyers; Chloe stamps the board back down and asks not to be made the girl whose roof fell in. By evening Jonah is Hot Tub Guy on eleven thousand reposts, and a producer tells him to be brave by nine. In a flat full of files, Odalys shows him the portal: no cover on the building, 97 insured guests. Hamid calls his wife, who says he may work, just tonight. The queue climbs the alley and the puck ticks with every scan. Inês gives Jonah a basil pot with a quadra in it. Rui arrives with a hammer, chisels and a bottle of brandy, and the reception TV reads 180 / 180.

The roof at golden hour is the happiest place in Portugal. Hamid’s nine-euro laser puts a red dot on a strip of masking tape: three centimetres. Tristan calls the game. A hundred and eighty people jump, and Daan goes through the decking to his hips, his leg hanging through the ceiling of the dorm below, where Mama van der Berg’s call rings on a dangling phone. Four calm firefighters cut him free and tell Tristan to clear the roof. He does not. Jonah goes live to a hundred thousand viewers, shows the dot on eight and a cut frame, and asks everyone to walk. The crowd chants “Hot Tub Guy.” The hens lead sixty people down, and that is all. At 8:41 the jets roar, the music becomes a slow bassline nobody is playing, the roof sways in time, and Hamid understands: the building is being tuned. The puck is solid amber. The glass door swings shut and locks. The LED screen reads golden hour. eleven minutes. risk accepted. ☠

Act Three (45–59). The crowd becomes a wave against the door and the dot climbs to fourteen. Rui walks through them, touches one corner of the glass with a finger and taps it once. It falls like sugar. “Pronto.” Hamid whistles the roof silent, and the crowd files down in one line with left hands on the stone. Jonah and Joost peel a soaked mascot out of his thousand-kilo costume. Chloe stays in the corner of the tub, framing the sunset. She tells Jonah there is no after for the girl whose roof fell in. He holds out his hand and she starts to reach for it. The groaning stops. “CORRE!” She turns the camera round to be in the last light, and Inês hauls Jonah back through the door by his shirt.

The tub goes down level and lit. Jonah, Inês, Hamid, Rui and Joost run the stairwell and see it pass through each doorway: the dorm, the kitchen and its silver waterfall of sardines, a bathroom where Callum, on a floating square of tile, raises a yoghurt spoon and waves, the Social Space, the bar. Then a boom like a church bell underwater, and every floor folds down on top of it. In the dust, a roll call: “I’m Daan.” “Sorry. Habit.” The stone stairwell stands alone. Through a slit window the alley is full of grey, living people, and Odalys’s plumb line swings across empty air. The firefighters say stay still until morning. Hamid says the bass is still pushing this chimney. Rui points the way nobody wants to go.

In the flooded basement Tristan stands on a sewing-machine table hugging the Hub’s log server. In the cistern the tub lies on its side, lights cycling. A hand above the waterline still holds the camera. Inês lays a paper garland down, and Jonah stops the recording. Joost smashes the basement puck with a dressmaker’s dummy and the bass stops everywhere, the first true silence since the opening. Rui opens the 1755 door, tok, tok, tok, and the water drains into the tunnel. They pass the names of people who got out once before and reach the fork. “Left.” Tristan hears the festival down the right-hand branch and goes. Jonah goes back after the scream, tapping every step, tok, tok, tonk, and pulls him up out of the well by the wrist. The server falls away without a sound. When the arch ahead begins to sag, the flood delivers a sawn length of the building’s own oak, and Hamid and Rui stand it under the stone: “They built you to hold. So hold.” Six grey figures climb out of a drain in the Largo do Chafariz de Dentro into brass, sardines and a crowd applauding the earthquake costume.

Resolution and epilogue (60–69). At the hospital at 3 a.m. the foil blankets sit under paper sardine hats. Dale renews his week, the triplets swap their bracelets, and Callum thinks he was the last person to say hello to her. Odalys arrives with four espressos and reads her tablet: ninety-seven accounted for, and one who pressed the other button. “It’s a correlation. It’s not a cause.” At noon, in front of the gap where the house stood and the stairwell still standing in it, Tristan in navy calls it an act of God. Hamid ties his rubber band to the police tape and goes home. In Rui’s kitchen Chloe’s phone posts her reel by itself, ending on a white frame with a claim number, AGM-0003-LX. Then it is gone. Odalys lays the frame beside her own paperwork and finds that the claim draft was created the second Chloe pressed the button. Across from the floodlit stairwell Jonah finally texts Danny, five years late, and the reply four minutes later makes him laugh out loud.

Three weeks on, Odalys’s manager closes the file and she opens a spreadsheet with three rows, coincidences.xlsx. It autosaves to a company she has never heard of. In South Philadelphia, Jonah buys Danny a cheesesteak while Inês shows him a new thesis title on video, and a message slides down the screen: you understand load. risk accepted? ☠ In Utrecht, Joost books a hostel in Reykjavík with twelve showers in one room, and this time, with Mama watching, he presses the left-hand button. In Alfama, Odalys reaches to untie her plumb line and leaves it. At the foot of the stairwell, among the flowers and the basil pots, a small white puck glows softly blue.

Series bible page: where this film sits

The franchise. 101 Ways to Die in a Hostel is a planned series of 103 novels by Jonathan Anderson, each a stand-alone horror-comedy in one hostel, one city and one spectacular accident. Tone: real dread, then a joke one beat later. The satire targets travel, influencer and budget culture, never a character’s identity or culture.

What repeats in every film. - FreeToWander, the budget booking platform with the mascot Wanda and the slogan “Go Anywhere. Feel Everything.” - The Partner Hub, a white puck with a blue ring that turns amber before it acts. Each hostel’s staff give it a local nickname. Here it is o Olho, the Eye. - @HostelReaper, who posts in polite, lowercase, actuarial language with no exclamation marks and signs off “risk accepted. ☠”. - WanderSafe, the €2.99-a-night travel cover offered at check-in. - The claim number on the signature death. Here it is AGM-0003-LX.

Before this film. Book 1, Sparks Fly (Prague), and Book 2, Curry, Wi-Fi, and a Cryptic Curse (Goa). Kwame Asante and Tasha Dlamini reach this film through a stand-up clip and a warning by text, and Brody Kellerman and Sven Håkansson appear as rows in Odalys’s spreadsheet. The reply Jonah remembers from January is the bridge from Book 2.

What this film adds. Odalys Ferreira, claims adjuster, with her plumb line and her spreadsheet. She becomes the series’ recurring investigator and the franchise’s connective tissue. Her ceiling is “It’s a correlation. It’s not a cause.” The film never goes further than that line.

After this film. Joost van der Berg books the Steam Room Hostel in Reykjavík for Book 4, Wet Floor. Odalys keeps measuring. The roof puck is still on.

Why it stands alone. A viewer needs none of this. Every thread above is either a joke that plays by itself or a closing image that rewards coming back.

60-second trailer script

Timings are approximate. It shows no death and does not name the victim. All music is original President Anderson material.

Time	Picture	Sound and words
0:00	Black.	One long, low wooden groan, like a ship leaning into a wave.
0:04	Alfama at golden hour: paper flags, sardines on the grill, the pink house.	Brass from a street away. “Saudade Is a Vibe” starts small.
0:08	Rui, in his flat cap, gold tooth catching the sun.	RUI: “If it stops groaning, you run.”
0:12	Chloe in a pool of gold light, the slide behind her.	CHLOE: “What if history had a slide?”
0:15	Fast: the net, the triplets’ name tags, a quarter rolling across the floor, plaster landing in a matcha.	Music builds. HAMID: “I’m on holiday.”
0:20	A hole in the plaster. The oak X, sawn through, gently moving.	The music drops to the groan.
0:23	Odalys at her window with a tiny espresso. A plumb line hangs dead straight beside a frame that is not.	ODALYS: “It will probably hold.”
0:27	A deck board comes up: a steel beam on a little wedge of pine.	TRISTAN, off screen: “That’s packing. Standard.”
0:31	Title on black: THE ROOF IS RATED FOR 40.	Music cuts. A single dry typing sound.
0:33	The roof at full party. Tristan on the mic. A hundred and eighty people in the air.	TRISTAN: “THE FLOOR IS LAVA!” Drop. “Floor Is Lava” at full tilt.
0:36	Title on black: THEY SOLD 180 TICKETS.	Music continues under.
0:38	The red laser dot jumps on the masking tape. Jonah live on his phone, shouting over the crowd.	CROWD chanting: “HOT TUB GUY! HOT TUB GUY!”
0:42	A white puck. Blue. Then amber. The glass door clicks locked.	The music dies into a slow two-note bassline.
0:45	LED screen: golden hour. eleven minutes. risk accepted. ☠	Bass only.
0:48	Rui’s finger on the corner of the glass. One tap. The whole door falls like sugar.	RUI: “Pronto.”
0:51	The sway. Faces turning. The groan under everything, and then, mid-phrase, nothing.	Total silence, two full seconds.
0:53	Rui’s face.	RUI: “CORRE!”
0:54	Through a stairwell doorway, a hot tub passes, level and lit. Through the next doorway Callum, on a floating square of tile, raises a yoghurt spoon and waves.	A spoon on a glass, one note.
0:57	Title: THE FLOOR IS LAVA. Beneath it, hand-lettered like a correction: (IT’S GONE).	A boom like a church bell underwater.
0:59	Black. Lowercase type appears, one key at a time: risk accepted. ☠ Under it: a white puck, glowing blue.	One typing sound. Out.