Joy, a bad-tempered loner, desperate for cash, is blackmailed into helping her space-obsessed nephew Daryl, build an impossibly complicated, extremely dangerous, and probably illegal science fair project.
Joy and Daryl are bonded by the shared trauma of grief. The death of her sister, his mother, has defined both of them in different ways. All she wants is to move to her isolated bush block and be left alone. He just wants to keep building the science project he started with his mum. When they are reluctantly brought together, her irresistible pessimism is met by his immovable optimism. The pressure of these opposing forces is powerful enough to create movie magic, and rebuild a broken family.
Moonshot is a cross-generational story with a warm hearted and uplifting climax. It’s an odd-couple drama laden with humour, that takes it’ lead from films like Hunt for the Wilderpeople and About a Boy and throws in a dash of the cathartic movie magic of Safety Not Guaranteed.
It’s a film about hope. Not just in a ‘believe in yourself and you can do anything’, Disney way… We’re asking a grown up, difficult, and real question: In a world that lets you down, time after time, in the most painful ways - Does hope have value?
What elevates Moonshot and makes it perfect for the big screen, is that the drama is all in service of a big, movie magic ending that will leave audiences bounding out of the cinema, filled with the joy of hope, and dying to spread the word.
Directed by: Nicholas Clifford
Written by: Nicholas Clifford & Jules Duncan
Produced by: Jim Wright & Elise Trenorden
Status: In Development
Supported by: