George Hughes’s screenplays, television scripts, non- fiction and photography compilation books are now available from this site. They can be bought in physical form from the online store or can be obtained as free digital downloads by emailing [email protected] .
The Webb Quartet
The “Webb Quartet” is made up of the screenplays Ambition (2005), Fabricators (2003), The Return (2017) and Shadows in the Rain (2016). Together, these four scripts tell one huge Crime story over the course of four decades.
AMBITION
South London small-time criminal brothers Phil and Martin Webb are struggling to make their way in recession- hit, early 1980’s Britain until an incredible opportunity to escape their dismal situation and move to the U.S. comes their way.
Whilst the idealistic and principled Martin is more cautious, Phil fully embraces the decadent and violent lifestyle of a professional criminal, descending into a paranoid, drug- fuelled world of sex, murder and betrayal over the next decade.
The brothers’ story takes them from the dilapidated, rain- soaked council estates and building sites of their homeland all the way to the most exclusive clubs of New York City, through the casinos of Vegas and finally to the beaches of the Californian promised land before everything comes to it’s bloody conclusion on New Year’s Eve, 1989.
Hughes’s third screenplay, Ambition was written in Bournemouth in 2004 - ’05 amidst the bustling heyday of the Freefall Records / South Coast Rock scene he helped to create. A massive crime epic, it takes place across two continents and ten years.
FABRICATORS
Rick Webb is a successful black market trader determined to exist as independently as possible with no ties to an ordinary life of day jobs, taxes and rent. Anonymously living in an industrial unit on the south coast, Rick occasionally has to deal with the criminal underworld but would rather avoid confrontation and violence to simply make enough money to do things on his own terms and devote the rest of his time to music, films and girls.
For Rick and his fellow “Fabricators”- a small group within a group in the local alternative scene- the government, the police and the mainstream media are long- forgotten irrelevancies but his achievements in living so freely have started to attract the last thing he wants: attention.
After turning down a job offer from a local crime boss and getting involved in a dangerous diamond smuggling deal, Rick’s commitment to his lifestyle- as well as his loyalty to his unstable friend Steve- is about to be well and truly tested…
Hughes’s first screenplay, Fabricators was written in Bournemouth in 2003. A stylish and atmospheric crime story and intense character study, it is set against the backdrop of the early 2000’s south coast alternative music culture.
THE RETURN
Ten years after completing the diamond deal that led to the death of crime boss Sean Taylor, Rick Webb is living quietly in the country until he’s found by an old associate and lured back to the place and the life he’d left behind with the promise of a one- off, highly lucrative job.
But for the now sober Rick, the real opportunity is one for revenge against the one enemy he had to leave standing. Returning to the south coast and the scenes of his past crimes, Rick’s old ways soon come back to him as he is again drawn into a murky world of violence and betrayal…
The Return is Hughes’s sequel to his first screenplay, Fabricators. It picks up a decade later and was originally conceived in 2004. He began writing the script in Bournemouth in 2007 and eventually completed it in London in 2017.
SHADOWS IN THE RAIN
Los Angeles private investigator Tony Collen is running a struggling business not helped by a terrible reputation that leaves him only able to work for organised crime figures who can’t go to the law.
On a recent job, Collen had to kill a mob enforcer in self defense and just about got away with it but his next assignment- working for a boss you don’t cross- is to look into that very man’s death.
Having taken the money, Collen begins the task of investigating a murder he committed himself, desperately trying to pin the killing on someone else before the authorities and his clients close in around him…
Hughes wrote Shadows in the Rain in 2016. A stylishly atmospheric thriller, the story had existed for several years and dates back to Hughes’s time in Bournemouth but he didn’t start writing the screenplay until after his move to London.
The Dystopia Quartet
The “Dystopia Quartet” is made up of the screenplays Revolution (2017), Mutineers (2016), Remnants (2004) and Scorched Earth (2016). Together, these four scripts form a massive future history spanning from the present day to the beginning of the 22nd Century.
REVOLUTION
When a hapless divorcee office worker is made redundant he meets a charismatic anarchist in a London pub and begins to think differently about his life, the country and it’s leaders...
Before long he’s leading marches through the streets for C.P.R. (the Campaign for Peaceful Revolution) and his everyman appeal leads to a wider range of people joining rather than just the usual students and professional protesters.
But when a C.P.R. demonstration turns violent the unthinkable happens- people have finally had enough and the entire UK government is brought down…
Hughes began developing the story for Revolution in Bournemouth in 2004. He completed the screenplay in London in 2017.
MUTINEERS
In 2080 the Fifth World War between China and the USA has entered it’s third year. But for the multi- national, conscripted crew of the US attack sub Manta it’s simply business as usual, their “Legalised Piracy” of the seas always preferable to returning to their desperate lives in their impoverished home countries.
But when the Manta is ordered to break of it’s behind the lines attacks on Chinese vessels and territories, it’s complement of killers and criminals turn on the senior officers to take over the sub and continue the violent raids that have become their way of life…
With the Manta now completely out of control and with two rival factions of mutineers emerging to fight each other, a young conscript is forced to choose a side- before it’s too late for anyone…
Hughes began developing the story for the Sci- Fi / War script Mutineers in Belmont, London in 2015. He wrote the screenplay in 2016.
REMNANTS
Somewhere in the terrifying, burnt out wasteland that used to be England, revolutionary resistance leader Jim Burton and his girlfriend Star have escaped the darkness of the last underground city…
But the soldiers of the regime they fled and fearsome bounty hunter Keif MacReady are sent after them, intent on stopping them from reaching a legendary settlement by the sea and uniting the survivors of the wilderness.
Written in 2003 - ’04, Remnants was Hughes’s second screenplay. He began filming it in 2005 and eventually completed the project and released the picture in the summer of 2007.
SCORCHED EARTH
In 2090 Earth is invaded by the Tranar Alliance, a massive alien armada that soon takes over the planet.
Former soldier Dean Kahn- who was present at the initial encounter with the Tranars- flees to the crime- ridden Earth colony worlds and makes a living as a mercenary until he’s recruited into a newly formed Human resistance army determined to take their planet back.
Over several years, Kahn and his squadron fight against the might of the Tranar forces, eventually making it all the way back to Earth for the final confrontation…
Based on a series of short stories he wrote in his teenage years, Scorched Earth is Hughes’s epic Sci- Fi dystopia / alien invasion script. He began writing it in Bournemouth in 2005. It was completed in London in 2016.
The Dystopia Trilogy
The “Dystopia Trilogy” is made up of the unmade short film script Black Blight (2018) and two new feature screenplays- Present Tense and The Barricade (both 2019). All three stories are set at different points in time in the same dark future universe as the Dystopia Quartet.
BLACK BLIGHT
The year is 2078. China and the USA are fighting the Fifth World War. Whilst the Chinese and US mainlands and their peoples stay out of the conflicted, conscripted soldiers from both sides’ occupied territories fight their war for them.
In the South China Sea, an island of extreme strategic value has been seized by a piratical group of deserters but legendary British Army combat veteran Major John Harris is determined to retake it by any means necessary.
Harris’s plan is to recruit some of the most dangerous criminals held in military prison and turn them into the elite special forces unit “Black Blight”- pitting the bloodthirsty pirates that hold the island against an adversary even worse than themselves...
Hughes wrote the screenplay for Black Blight in Sutton, London in 2018. It was to have been filmed as a short the same year but the project was ultimately abandoned.
PRESENT TENSE
In 1996, bored teenager Michael is waiting to get out of school and leave his home town until he meets the beautiful Dominique, a seemingly perfect woman who appears out of nowhere and has a strange fascination with him.
Introduced to the chance of escape from the drudgery of his everyday existence by the mysterious beauty, Michael gets more than he bargained for when he discovers that Dominique is not just a “Synthetic”, artificial human but also a fugitive from a totalitarian state a century into the future.
When agents of the deadly regime arrive in the present, Michael and Dominique use stolen time travel technology to flee deeper into the past but the forces of the future are never far behind them…
A new Sci- Fi / Action thriller script that combines an innovative time travel concept with a return to the dark future universe of Scorched Earth and Mutineers, Hughes devised the story for Present Tense in 2018 before writing the screenplay in 2019.
THE BARRICADE
The year: 2088. The place: the planet Daedalus, site of the “Barricade-” a massive network of space stations established by the US military after a devastating global conflict on Earth.
Arriving at this interstellar crossroads of trade, crime and danger are the mercenary crew of the cargo ship Torrens and the young drifter Katya, who meet by chance at the notorious Landing Strip bar just as the entire spaceport is thrown into chaos by simultaneous technological and biological viral attacks on the barricade.
Stranded on Daedalus with limited weapons and supplies, Katya, the Torrens crewmen and a small group of survivors fortify the Landing Strip to defend themselves against the planet’s terrifyingly mutated indigenous alien creatures...
A new Sci- Fi / Horror / Action script that again returns to the dark future universe of the Dystopia Quartet, Hughes devised the story for The Barricade in 2018 before writing the screenplay in 2019.
The Omnibus Editions
The Webb Quartet (Ambition, Fabricators, The Return and Shadows in the Rain), The Dystopia Quartet (Revolution, Mutineers, Remnants and Scorched Earth) and The Dystopia Trilogy (Black Blight, Present Tense and The Barricade) are also available in these collections.
The TV Scripts
Hughes wrote all of the scripts for The Rule Book (2017) and Sands (2018), two series he created for British television.
THE RULE BOOK: SERIES 1 - 3
Detective Inspector Jeff Hayes is a tough, dedicated but crooked officer in London’s Metropolitan Police Force. A middle- aged, alcoholic Falklands War veteran with a broken marriage and debts through the roof, he is an unapologetic traditionalist not averse to the occasional battering of a suspect or pint with a member of the old school criminal underworld.
Constable Chris Petersen is young, university- educated, idealistic and clean- living. In a happy relationship with his psychologist girlfriend, Petersen is a former probation officer and has just been made a detective too.
On the eve of what threaten to become the capital’s worst ever riots sparked off by mirror image Islamist and Far Right extremists, Hayes and Petersen are partnered up by their respective bosses- the old guard who control Hayes wanting Petersen out and the new breed who control Petersen wanting Hayes out.
But Hayes and Petersen become friends when they’re supposed to be enemies. Despite being a generation apart and political polar opposites, both men come to rely upon and learn from each other, developing a unique way of working and an unlikely friendship that leaves everyone’s expectations shattered.
Hughes began writing The Rule Book in Bournemouth in 2006, completing the first part of first episode “One and the Same” in 2007 and the second in 2008. He continued to work on the series after moving to London and eventually finished the script for the final episode, “On Every Street”, in 2017.
SANDS: THE COMPLETE SERIES
Bournemouth, 2007. Three young friends- Mark, Joe and Nick- are about to spend their last summer on the south coast before going their separate ways. Their shared past and mutual interest in drinking, girls and music is coming to an end as they realise that their youth won’t last forever and they move on with their lives.
Mark, a skint musician with big dreams of founding a record label and changing the world, is struggling with his extremely high- maintenance and tempestuous relationship with his beautiful but unpredictable girlfriend Chloe.
Dependable nice guy Joe is leaving to start a new career in London whilst Scouse “Immigrant” Nick’s a dodgy chancer who’s fallen on his feet and got a job with a crooked local villain with some very dangerous and powerful friends…
Hughes’s semi- autobiographical tale of love, life and loss in his hometown during it’s buzzing 2000’s prime, Sands is a series he began writing in 2009. It was completed in 2018.
The Shorts
The scripts for the short films made by Freefall Productions.
THE SHORT FILMS
The Mover: A nameless criminal courier lives a quiet, anonymous life on the road until he is forced to confront his greatest fears when a routine job turns violent.
The 26.2 Pint Marathon: Two champion drinkers challenge each other to a high stakes beer consuming competition.
Henpecked Anonymous: Desperate to escape his bossy wife, a long- suffering “Henpecking Victim” joins a revolutionary new support group.
Beneath the Ice: Two seasoned hitmen discuss their lives and careers and wonder if they can trust each other as they wait for their target.
Hughes wrote his short film scripts in Bournemouth between the mid- 2000’s and early 2010’s. His first was The Mover in 2005. The same year saw the making of The Future, a surreal short that was largely improvised with no real screenplay. The 26.2 Pint Marathon and Beneath the Ice (initially conceived as The Mover 2) were written in 2010. Henpecked Anonymous was written in 2011. This collection also includes the extra, unofficial short fan film scripts Predator 3 (2006), Alien 5, Highlander VI and Terminator 5 (all 2011).
THE SHORT FILMS: VOLUME 2
Occasional: A rarely activated, "Occasional" SIS operative is sent on assignment in Spain to meet a mysterious information dealer.
The Cost of Our Blood: A violent criminal is released after serving seven years in prison- and immediately goes after the former comrades who abandoned him to the authorities.
Mila's Weekend: Mila struggles to keep up the cover of a casual weekend affair whilst actually carrying out a secret corporate espionage mission.
Hughes wrote and filmed Occasional in 2019, The Cost of Our Blood in 2020 and Mila's Weekend in 2021.
THE SHORT FILMS: VOLUME 3
Zenyth: Detective Steve Mills is hunting a serial killer. Increasingly disturbed by the brutal crimes he’s investigating, Mills is running out of time before the murderer strikes again. But then he’s contacted by the mysterious Natalya, who knows exactly who- and what- the killer really is…
The Edge of the Blade: In 2019, detective Will Carson set up a trap to catch notorious armed robber Max Stavros that went badly wrong. Four years later, Carson gets another chance to take out Stavros- but this time, he sends in Mia Cas, an expert in off- book elimination missions.
Hughes wrote the Zenyth script in 2021 and filmed it in 2022. He wrote The Edge of the Blade in 2022 and filmed it in 2023.
The Individual Shorts
Individual screenplays for The Mover, The 26.2 Pint Marathon, Henpecked Anonymous, Beneath the Ice, Occasional, The Cost of Our Blood, Mila's Weekend, Zenyth and The Edge of the Blade.
The Script Compilation Books
The Script Book (2013) and Five Shorts (2016).
The Non- Fiction Books
Five reference books. Weird and Wonderful: Fifty Cult Films (2007), The Freefall Productions Story (2007), Collected (2010), Ever After (2019) and Weird and Wonderful II: Fifty More Cult Films (2020).
The Photography Compilations
Five photography books. Photos: 1998 - 2002 (The Early Years), Photos: 2003 - 2006 (The Freefall Records Era), Photos: 2007 - 2012 (The End of the South Coast Era), Photos: 2013 - 2019 (The London Years) and Photos: 2020 - 2023 (The Return to the South Coast).
The Webb Quartet
The “Webb Quartet” is made up of the screenplays Ambition (2005), Fabricators (2003), The Return (2017) and Shadows in the Rain (2016). Together, these four scripts tell one huge Crime story over the course of four decades.
AMBITION
South London small-time criminal brothers Phil and Martin Webb are struggling to make their way in recession- hit, early 1980’s Britain until an incredible opportunity to escape their dismal situation and move to the U.S. comes their way.
Whilst the idealistic and principled Martin is more cautious, Phil fully embraces the decadent and violent lifestyle of a professional criminal, descending into a paranoid, drug- fuelled world of sex, murder and betrayal over the next decade.
The brothers’ story takes them from the dilapidated, rain- soaked council estates and building sites of their homeland all the way to the most exclusive clubs of New York City, through the casinos of Vegas and finally to the beaches of the Californian promised land before everything comes to it’s bloody conclusion on New Year’s Eve, 1989.
Hughes’s third screenplay, Ambition was written in Bournemouth in 2004 - ’05 amidst the bustling heyday of the Freefall Records / South Coast Rock scene he helped to create. A massive crime epic, it takes place across two continents and ten years.
FABRICATORS
Rick Webb is a successful black market trader determined to exist as independently as possible with no ties to an ordinary life of day jobs, taxes and rent. Anonymously living in an industrial unit on the south coast, Rick occasionally has to deal with the criminal underworld but would rather avoid confrontation and violence to simply make enough money to do things on his own terms and devote the rest of his time to music, films and girls.
For Rick and his fellow “Fabricators”- a small group within a group in the local alternative scene- the government, the police and the mainstream media are long- forgotten irrelevancies but his achievements in living so freely have started to attract the last thing he wants: attention.
After turning down a job offer from a local crime boss and getting involved in a dangerous diamond smuggling deal, Rick’s commitment to his lifestyle- as well as his loyalty to his unstable friend Steve- is about to be well and truly tested…
Hughes’s first screenplay, Fabricators was written in Bournemouth in 2003. A stylish and atmospheric crime story and intense character study, it is set against the backdrop of the early 2000’s south coast alternative music culture.
THE RETURN
Ten years after completing the diamond deal that led to the death of crime boss Sean Taylor, Rick Webb is living quietly in the country until he’s found by an old associate and lured back to the place and the life he’d left behind with the promise of a one- off, highly lucrative job.
But for the now sober Rick, the real opportunity is one for revenge against the one enemy he had to leave standing. Returning to the south coast and the scenes of his past crimes, Rick’s old ways soon come back to him as he is again drawn into a murky world of violence and betrayal…
The Return is Hughes’s sequel to his first screenplay, Fabricators. It picks up a decade later and was originally conceived in 2004. He began writing the script in Bournemouth in 2007 and eventually completed it in London in 2017.
SHADOWS IN THE RAIN
Los Angeles private investigator Tony Collen is running a struggling business not helped by a terrible reputation that leaves him only able to work for organised crime figures who can’t go to the law.
On a recent job, Collen had to kill a mob enforcer in self defense and just about got away with it but his next assignment- working for a boss you don’t cross- is to look into that very man’s death.
Having taken the money, Collen begins the task of investigating a murder he committed himself, desperately trying to pin the killing on someone else before the authorities and his clients close in around him…
Hughes wrote Shadows in the Rain in 2016. A stylishly atmospheric thriller, the story had existed for several years and dates back to Hughes’s time in Bournemouth but he didn’t start writing the screenplay until after his move to London.
The Dystopia Quartet
The “Dystopia Quartet” is made up of the screenplays Revolution (2017), Mutineers (2016), Remnants (2004) and Scorched Earth (2016). Together, these four scripts form a massive future history spanning from the present day to the beginning of the 22nd Century.
REVOLUTION
When a hapless divorcee office worker is made redundant he meets a charismatic anarchist in a London pub and begins to think differently about his life, the country and it’s leaders...
Before long he’s leading marches through the streets for C.P.R. (the Campaign for Peaceful Revolution) and his everyman appeal leads to a wider range of people joining rather than just the usual students and professional protesters.
But when a C.P.R. demonstration turns violent the unthinkable happens- people have finally had enough and the entire UK government is brought down…
Hughes began developing the story for Revolution in Bournemouth in 2004. He completed the screenplay in London in 2017.
MUTINEERS
In 2080 the Fifth World War between China and the USA has entered it’s third year. But for the multi- national, conscripted crew of the US attack sub Manta it’s simply business as usual, their “Legalised Piracy” of the seas always preferable to returning to their desperate lives in their impoverished home countries.
But when the Manta is ordered to break of it’s behind the lines attacks on Chinese vessels and territories, it’s complement of killers and criminals turn on the senior officers to take over the sub and continue the violent raids that have become their way of life…
With the Manta now completely out of control and with two rival factions of mutineers emerging to fight each other, a young conscript is forced to choose a side- before it’s too late for anyone…
Hughes began developing the story for the Sci- Fi / War script Mutineers in Belmont, London in 2015. He wrote the screenplay in 2016.
REMNANTS
Somewhere in the terrifying, burnt out wasteland that used to be England, revolutionary resistance leader Jim Burton and his girlfriend Star have escaped the darkness of the last underground city…
But the soldiers of the regime they fled and fearsome bounty hunter Keif MacReady are sent after them, intent on stopping them from reaching a legendary settlement by the sea and uniting the survivors of the wilderness.
Written in 2003 - ’04, Remnants was Hughes’s second screenplay. He began filming it in 2005 and eventually completed the project and released the picture in the summer of 2007.
SCORCHED EARTH
In 2090 Earth is invaded by the Tranar Alliance, a massive alien armada that soon takes over the planet.
Former soldier Dean Kahn- who was present at the initial encounter with the Tranars- flees to the crime- ridden Earth colony worlds and makes a living as a mercenary until he’s recruited into a newly formed Human resistance army determined to take their planet back.
Over several years, Kahn and his squadron fight against the might of the Tranar forces, eventually making it all the way back to Earth for the final confrontation…
Based on a series of short stories he wrote in his teenage years, Scorched Earth is Hughes’s epic Sci- Fi dystopia / alien invasion script. He began writing it in Bournemouth in 2005. It was completed in London in 2016.
The Dystopia Trilogy
The “Dystopia Trilogy” is made up of the unmade short film script Black Blight (2018) and two new feature screenplays- Present Tense and The Barricade (both 2019). All three stories are set at different points in time in the same dark future universe as the Dystopia Quartet.
BLACK BLIGHT
The year is 2078. China and the USA are fighting the Fifth World War. Whilst the Chinese and US mainlands and their peoples stay out of the conflicted, conscripted soldiers from both sides’ occupied territories fight their war for them.
In the South China Sea, an island of extreme strategic value has been seized by a piratical group of deserters but legendary British Army combat veteran Major John Harris is determined to retake it by any means necessary.
Harris’s plan is to recruit some of the most dangerous criminals held in military prison and turn them into the elite special forces unit “Black Blight”- pitting the bloodthirsty pirates that hold the island against an adversary even worse than themselves...
Hughes wrote the screenplay for Black Blight in Sutton, London in 2018. It was to have been filmed as a short the same year but the project was ultimately abandoned.
PRESENT TENSE
In 1996, bored teenager Michael is waiting to get out of school and leave his home town until he meets the beautiful Dominique, a seemingly perfect woman who appears out of nowhere and has a strange fascination with him.
Introduced to the chance of escape from the drudgery of his everyday existence by the mysterious beauty, Michael gets more than he bargained for when he discovers that Dominique is not just a “Synthetic”, artificial human but also a fugitive from a totalitarian state a century into the future.
When agents of the deadly regime arrive in the present, Michael and Dominique use stolen time travel technology to flee deeper into the past but the forces of the future are never far behind them…
A new Sci- Fi / Action thriller script that combines an innovative time travel concept with a return to the dark future universe of Scorched Earth and Mutineers, Hughes devised the story for Present Tense in 2018 before writing the screenplay in 2019.
THE BARRICADE
The year: 2088. The place: the planet Daedalus, site of the “Barricade-” a massive network of space stations established by the US military after a devastating global conflict on Earth.
Arriving at this interstellar crossroads of trade, crime and danger are the mercenary crew of the cargo ship Torrens and the young drifter Katya, who meet by chance at the notorious Landing Strip bar just as the entire spaceport is thrown into chaos by simultaneous technological and biological viral attacks on the barricade.
Stranded on Daedalus with limited weapons and supplies, Katya, the Torrens crewmen and a small group of survivors fortify the Landing Strip to defend themselves against the planet’s terrifyingly mutated indigenous alien creatures...
A new Sci- Fi / Horror / Action script that again returns to the dark future universe of the Dystopia Quartet, Hughes devised the story for The Barricade in 2018 before writing the screenplay in 2019.
The Omnibus Editions
The Webb Quartet (Ambition, Fabricators, The Return and Shadows in the Rain), The Dystopia Quartet (Revolution, Mutineers, Remnants and Scorched Earth) and The Dystopia Trilogy (Black Blight, Present Tense and The Barricade) are also available in these collections.
The TV Scripts
Hughes wrote all of the scripts for The Rule Book (2017) and Sands (2018), two series he created for British television.
THE RULE BOOK: SERIES 1 - 3
Detective Inspector Jeff Hayes is a tough, dedicated but crooked officer in London’s Metropolitan Police Force. A middle- aged, alcoholic Falklands War veteran with a broken marriage and debts through the roof, he is an unapologetic traditionalist not averse to the occasional battering of a suspect or pint with a member of the old school criminal underworld.
Constable Chris Petersen is young, university- educated, idealistic and clean- living. In a happy relationship with his psychologist girlfriend, Petersen is a former probation officer and has just been made a detective too.
On the eve of what threaten to become the capital’s worst ever riots sparked off by mirror image Islamist and Far Right extremists, Hayes and Petersen are partnered up by their respective bosses- the old guard who control Hayes wanting Petersen out and the new breed who control Petersen wanting Hayes out.
But Hayes and Petersen become friends when they’re supposed to be enemies. Despite being a generation apart and political polar opposites, both men come to rely upon and learn from each other, developing a unique way of working and an unlikely friendship that leaves everyone’s expectations shattered.
Hughes began writing The Rule Book in Bournemouth in 2006, completing the first part of first episode “One and the Same” in 2007 and the second in 2008. He continued to work on the series after moving to London and eventually finished the script for the final episode, “On Every Street”, in 2017.
SANDS: THE COMPLETE SERIES
Bournemouth, 2007. Three young friends- Mark, Joe and Nick- are about to spend their last summer on the south coast before going their separate ways. Their shared past and mutual interest in drinking, girls and music is coming to an end as they realise that their youth won’t last forever and they move on with their lives.
Mark, a skint musician with big dreams of founding a record label and changing the world, is struggling with his extremely high- maintenance and tempestuous relationship with his beautiful but unpredictable girlfriend Chloe.
Dependable nice guy Joe is leaving to start a new career in London whilst Scouse “Immigrant” Nick’s a dodgy chancer who’s fallen on his feet and got a job with a crooked local villain with some very dangerous and powerful friends…
Hughes’s semi- autobiographical tale of love, life and loss in his hometown during it’s buzzing 2000’s prime, Sands is a series he began writing in 2009. It was completed in 2018.
The Shorts
The scripts for the short films made by Freefall Productions.
THE SHORT FILMS
The Mover: A nameless criminal courier lives a quiet, anonymous life on the road until he is forced to confront his greatest fears when a routine job turns violent.
The 26.2 Pint Marathon: Two champion drinkers challenge each other to a high stakes beer consuming competition.
Henpecked Anonymous: Desperate to escape his bossy wife, a long- suffering “Henpecking Victim” joins a revolutionary new support group.
Beneath the Ice: Two seasoned hitmen discuss their lives and careers and wonder if they can trust each other as they wait for their target.
Hughes wrote his short film scripts in Bournemouth between the mid- 2000’s and early 2010’s. His first was The Mover in 2005. The same year saw the making of The Future, a surreal short that was largely improvised with no real screenplay. The 26.2 Pint Marathon and Beneath the Ice (initially conceived as The Mover 2) were written in 2010. Henpecked Anonymous was written in 2011. This collection also includes the extra, unofficial short fan film scripts Predator 3 (2006), Alien 5, Highlander VI and Terminator 5 (all 2011).
THE SHORT FILMS: VOLUME 2
Occasional: A rarely activated, "Occasional" SIS operative is sent on assignment in Spain to meet a mysterious information dealer.
The Cost of Our Blood: A violent criminal is released after serving seven years in prison- and immediately goes after the former comrades who abandoned him to the authorities.
Mila's Weekend: Mila struggles to keep up the cover of a casual weekend affair whilst actually carrying out a secret corporate espionage mission.
Hughes wrote and filmed Occasional in 2019, The Cost of Our Blood in 2020 and Mila's Weekend in 2021.
THE SHORT FILMS: VOLUME 3
Zenyth: Detective Steve Mills is hunting a serial killer. Increasingly disturbed by the brutal crimes he’s investigating, Mills is running out of time before the murderer strikes again. But then he’s contacted by the mysterious Natalya, who knows exactly who- and what- the killer really is…
The Edge of the Blade: In 2019, detective Will Carson set up a trap to catch notorious armed robber Max Stavros that went badly wrong. Four years later, Carson gets another chance to take out Stavros- but this time, he sends in Mia Cas, an expert in off- book elimination missions.
Hughes wrote the Zenyth script in 2021 and filmed it in 2022. He wrote The Edge of the Blade in 2022 and filmed it in 2023.
The Individual Shorts
Individual screenplays for The Mover, The 26.2 Pint Marathon, Henpecked Anonymous, Beneath the Ice, Occasional, The Cost of Our Blood, Mila's Weekend, Zenyth and The Edge of the Blade.
The Script Compilation Books
The Script Book (2013) and Five Shorts (2016).
The Non- Fiction Books
Five reference books. Weird and Wonderful: Fifty Cult Films (2007), The Freefall Productions Story (2007), Collected (2010), Ever After (2019) and Weird and Wonderful II: Fifty More Cult Films (2020).
The Photography Compilations
Five photography books. Photos: 1998 - 2002 (The Early Years), Photos: 2003 - 2006 (The Freefall Records Era), Photos: 2007 - 2012 (The End of the South Coast Era), Photos: 2013 - 2019 (The London Years) and Photos: 2020 - 2023 (The Return to the South Coast).