ALL IS NOT WELL

When Anthony approached me with the idea of Midnight Pharmacy my brain instantly kicked into Carpenter mode and started thinking of cool set pieces and visuals. But as the set pieces piled up what actually climbed to the top of my interest was the characters. The dystopian world we had created was, like the Edge, only a stones throw away from many of the realities that Anthony and I grew up around. I lived a fairly uneventful life in Teeside, North Yorkshire but the industrial landscape that surrounded me was the backdrop of my upbringing and the desolation that occurred when those industries died threw up so many dark alleys all over the areas that I used to roam freely. And the people that were most effected were those on the fringes of society. People who were once living hard but manageable lives now couldn’t afford to keep the electricity on or food on the table. Other people saw opportunity in the deprivation. Developers saw the valuable land beneath and were happy to let  places die so they could buy it on the cheap. Drug dealers moved in to exploit people’s desperation. And there are places like the Pharmacy. The one place that all people, rich or poor, need to go. Everyone gets sick. And so we saw an opportunity to not only construct a great, contained, action packed thriller but also pack it tight with characters from a wide net of society that would realistically be in the same place. We mention chemistry a lot in the treatment. Because we are fascinated by what people can be in the right or wrong circumstances. It goes one way you have the big bang, a life giving force of good. Or the other, an atom bomb capable of destroying all in its path. It is with this metaphor we created a tension and suspense that will keep audiences glued to the screen, fearing the outcome.