SPINNERS

In Development

Delia must explain her scandalous pregnancy - but how can she tell them it was an alien? 

The small New Zealand town of Inner Hope is in trouble; the meatworks, the economic driver of the town and the employer of generations of townsfolk, is closing. The young women meatpackers see this is their chance to vamoose…”get the hell out of this shit hole town once and for all.” But Mayor Jim refuses to stand by and watch his town die. His brainwave is to turn it into a tourist Mecca with a library and an Aquatic Centre….a monster with five pools and the biggest water slide in the southern hemisphere.  He recruits Phil, his bookish nephew, to rebuild the derelict library - these days used by the local teenagers for pursuits which have nothing to do with books.

 When an unexpected slew of teenage pregnancies occurs, all reportedly after encounters with visiting spacemen, UFO mania takes hold. Phil, Harvey the local cop, and Mayor Jim try to counter the extra-terrestrial madness with logic and reason.

The quiet centre of this storm is the vulnerable Delia, who cannot explain her troubling pregnancy. With her brutish father and nosey friends at the meatworks, this motherless teen cuts a figure of bruised melancholy as she tries to make sense of it all.  What is the meaning of her flashbacks, which feature mysterious images of a strange man with golden hair? If he wasn’t an alien - then who is he? 

 With Inner Hope reeling into hysteria, the locals prepare for the return of the aliens, whilst making a killing from the hordes of tourists and journalists paying to see the spot where the space ship landed. 

 Phil is appalled by the town’s descent into apostasy - he is determined to work out the mystery and as his delicate friendship with Delia blossoms, he knows the only way to stop this collective madness, is to unravel the truth - but how, with the townsfolk enthusiastically embracing their new found notoriety and this far-fetched narrative?

 Spinners is a story of a community who weave the dreams they need to get by.  This retelling of the nativity story celebrates the triumph of love and hope and reason over madness - unless of course, a spaceship really did come by Inner Hope that night…  

Director

John Sheedy