Psychological Thriller · Limited Series · Chicago

Every Love Story Needs a Witness.

When a glamorous engagement party ends in blood, the maid of honor becomes the only survivor— and turns her testimony into the most dangerous performance of her life.

Core question: What happens when love, content, and confession collide?
Tone: Gone Girl x You with the formal play of Searching.

View Pitch Deck (PDF) Read Pilot Script (PDF) Investor Overview

Produced by Markel Media & Management · Markel Productions · 6 x 15–20 min · Designed for festival play and AVOD/SVOD expansion.

Why This Series Wins.

Built from the ground up to feel like a studio thriller while living in a smart, independent budget: contained locations, focused cast, and a visual language that travels across festivals, streamers, and social.

          Smart scale. Studio quality.

          One heightened weekend, a tight ensemble, and a rooftop engagement gone wrong.
          The stakes and scope read big; the production footprint stays lean and controllable.
        
          Form-forward, never alienating.

          Found footage, therapy tapes, police interviews, vlogs, and live podcasts layer together,
          but always in service of a clean, addictive central mystery: what really happened on that rooftop?
        
          Specific voice, wide audience.

          A Black, queer, Chicago lens on love, faith, and performance in a genre that rarely centers these stories—
          without becoming homework. It’s engineered to entertain first and linger after.

Story

The Amicicidal Massacre is a limited psychological thriller series about how far people will go to be believed when their entire life has been built for the camera. Told through found footage, therapy and police tapes, leaks, and a live podcast, the series dissects our hunger to be seen—and forgiven—in public.

Controlling Idea

When the need to be visible outweighs the need to be loved, truth turns into a performance— and performance becomes the only way to survive.

World & Tone

Chicago as a living character: lakefront luxury meets church basements and South Side rooftops. The camera is confession booth, weapon, and witness. Emotional horror is shot like psychological realism: silence, symmetry, and stillness become weapons.

Characters

Archetype-driven, spoiler-safe bios pulled from the series bible—designed for casting and press without giving away the key turns.

Lily Jameson Lead

The Devoted Monster. A meticulous maid of honor whose tenderness masks obsession. Lily survives the rooftop massacre and learns that in a world addicted to content, the safest place to hide is inside the story everyone wants to hear.

Mia Brooks Lead

The Idol. A rising Chicago influencer whose curated perfection never shows the cracks: her faith doubts, queer history, and fear of disappointing the community that made her. Even after death, Mia’s archive shapes every frame.

Elisha Ruiz Supporting

The Witness. A visual artist and friend caught between grief and survival. Elisha’s eye for images—and outrage at how quickly the internet moves on—drives the series toward uncomfortable truths.

Casting Snapshot

Select, paid, non-union roles. Built for actors who want layered psychological material, emotional range, and awards-forward character arcs.

Lily Jameson (Lead)

Age range mid 20s · Able to move between soft, devout, and terrifyingly still.
Comfort with confession-style monologues, therapy scenes, and found-footage intimacy.
Must carry both victimhood and quiet menace in the same frame.

Mia Brooks (Lead)

Age range mid-to-late 20s · Camera-native charisma; familiarity with influencer culture a plus.
Plays aspirational yet deeply human—especially in private, pre-engagement moments.
Appears through vlogs, archives, and memory in ways that reshape how we read the story.

Submit Casting Materials

Episodes

Six 15–20 minute episodes. Each chapter shifts the storytelling device—rooftop footage, interrogations, leaks, reenactments, live streams, and final confession—until the truth is less important than who gets to frame it.

EP1 — The Rooftop

The perfect engagement vlog spirals into a blood-soaked silence. Mia’s brand peaks as Lily’s secret slides reveal a different kind of love story across the skyline.

EP2 — Playback

Lily recounts the night in police interviews and therapy sessions. Each retelling nudges the details, while bodycam footage quietly mirrors the gaps.

EP3 — The Archive

Deleted footage leaks online and goes viral, exposing contradictions in Lily’s narrative. Flashbacks and hallucinations blur as she insists on “reframing” the truth herself.

EP4 — Rehearsal

We return to Mia and Lily’s teenage intimacy through reenactments Lily directs. The staged scenes start to feel more honest than anyone’s memory, including her own.

EP5 — Exposure

A live podcast “healing conversation” with Elisha unravels in real time as hacked clips interrupt. The ring light slowly turns into an interrogation lamp.

EP6 — The Witness

Lily records a final confession, admitting she “just wanted to be seen.” Hours later, a new upload appears—edited by unseen hands—forcing the audience to become the last witness.

Visual World & Director’s Vision

Directly drawn from the vision board and series bible: a color arc, lighting evolution, and symbolism that lets the series move from warm romance to spiritual horror without losing coherence.

Mia’s World

Bright whites and soft pinks, cosmetic high key lighting, lens flares, and curated frames. Exposure as status. Her scenes feel like sponsored content—until the mask slips.

Lily’s World

Muted blues and deep reds, shadowy corners, practical side light. Spaces that feel sacred and suffocating. Repression shows up in negative space and tightly controlled compositions.

Aftermath & Digital Immortality

Cold cyan LEDs, screen glow, digital noise, corrupted frames. Files glitch, faces smear, and overexposed white swallows detail—the haunting cost of living forever online.

Investor Overview

A contained, festival-first series with clear spend, clear path to audience, and a realistic lane into AVOD/SVOD catalog life. Designed for an investor or EP who wants both cultural impact and a proof-of-concept asset for future seasons or feature expansions.

Budget Snapshot

Total production target: ~$37K–$40K across six 15–20 minute episodes.
Allocation: Cast & Crew ~30% · Camera/Lighting ~25% · Post ~20% · Locations & Set ~15% · Contingency & Marketing ~10%.
Weekend-centric schedule with location clustering to control costs and maximize screen value.

Open Pitch Deck Open Pilot Script

Path to Screens

Festival circuit: SeriesFest, Urbanworld, Outfest, and other episodic programs.
AVOD/SVOD via aggregators like Filmhub, aiming for platforms including Tubi, Revry, and Prime Video.
Staggered YouTube rollout to build organic audience, with WIWGU and other owned channels amplifying the storyworld.

Request Investor Materials

What We’re Seeking

Lead investor, co-financier, or executive producer to close the production budget.
Strategic partners for festival marketing, PR, and distribution negotiations.
Potential in-kind support (locations, gear, post) with clear credit and integration terms.

For Serious Conversations

Detailed budget, schedule, lookbook, and data room are available upon request. All financial conversations are exploratory and non-binding until formal agreements are executed.

Press & Positioning

Positioned at the intersection of genre, culture, and tech: the horror of being watched, believed, and discarded in public.

Format

Limited series · 6 x 15–20 minutes · Chicago-set, primarily Black and Brown cast and crew.

Core Hooks

Visibility as horror · Confessional media · Queer and faith narratives under a true-crime lens · The haunting consequence of digital immortality.

Press Targets

Essence, Blavity, Shadow and Act, AfroTech, IndieWire, horror and queer genre outlets, plus festival press corridors.

Press / Media Contact

Team

Markel Productions · Markel Media & Management

Isaiah M. Lesley — Director · Writer · Producer (Chicago).

Isaiah’s work lives where faith, queerness, housing, and horror intersect. Drawing from his background in youth work and media, he uses psychological realism and genre to ask why we perform goodness when survival is on the line. BFA in Television: Executive Production & Entrepreneurship (Columbia College Chicago).