Written by Ryan Vallo

Projects

Truman & Me

(TV DRAMA MINISERIES, PREMIUM & STREAMING)

Genre: Period Drama Biopic, Based on True Stories (Co-Writer: Dannielle Mardi–Robertson)

Miniseries Logline: Dannielle, a young actress hippie recently returned from serving with Dean Martin and the USO in Vietnam, ventures to Kansas City on vacation. There, during a day off, she encounters an elderly army veteran on a park bench, and together they’re challenged to confront their haunting war memories. Who’s Dannielle’s new acquaintance? Aging U.S. president, Harry S. Truman.

Comps: Like The Two Popes and Forrest Gump, a park-bench, flashback TV miniseries about a young woman’s chance conversation with a former U.S. president, infused with the political tone and the wartime drama of Lincoln and Darkest Hour.

The Poet

(FEATURE FILM)

Genre: Period Drama Biopic, Based on a True Story

Logline: During the U.S. Revolutionary War, in order to convince skeptical printers to publish her book, America and Great Britain’s first, famous female poet must prove to a board of Boston’s most distinguished men that she is the true author of her poems when it is publicly discovered that she is an African slave.

Comps: American version of Belle, spiced with Collette & Miss Potter.

Age of Jackson

(TV DRAMA SERIES & BIOGRAPHY BOOK)

Genre: Period Dramatic Biopic, Based on a True Story

Series Logline: The world’s superpower, Great Britain, invades the United States alongside its Spanish and Native American allies, as the ruthless Washington elite simultaneously seize power. To save his imperiled country, an explosive army general, Andrew Jackson, commits brutal sins––only to be hailed by the People as the most revered president of the young American republic.

Comps: America's presidential version of The Crown, a true-story psychological drama and period political thriller. A Jane Austin-Charles Dickens-era Braveheart, infused with House of Cards corruption and battling nations à la Game of Thrones.

Hindenburg

(FEATURE FILM)

Genre: Period Historical Drama, Historical Fiction

Logline: Heiress Lillian Adelt boards the doomed LZ 129 Hindenburg flight with her parents, wealthy industrialist factory owners, to flee the ominous, burgeoning Nazi Reich. But when she discovers that one of the ship’s watch officers is her long-lost lover, Leo Bauer, Lillian’s jealous fiancé, Christian Konrad, threatens to expose her family’s Jewish identity.

Comps: An epic Titanic tragedy, spiced with a passionate Casablanca romance, all set aboard the infamous LZ 129 Hindenburg flight. A period romantic thriller.

Ambassadors Extraordinary

(BIOGRAPHY BOOK)

Genre: Biography, History, Political Thriller

Book Blurb: Amid opulent, glittering parties and lavish royal galas, America’s Ambassadors to the United Kingdom maneuver through covert negotiations, clandestine operations, and high-stakes diplomacy. They clash with foreign ministers, secretaries of state, presidents and prime ministers, and kings and queens as they strengthen the “special relationship,” helping the United States and Great Britain to grow from enemies to allies in a powerful diplomatic partnership that comes to define the world order and shape the global stage. For five U.S. Ministers to the Court of St. James’s, their experience abroad propels them to the American presidency. John Adams, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Martin Van Buren, and James Buchanan become, truly, the “extraordinary” ambassadors.

Comps: The true, real life, period drama sagas behind Netflix’s hit political thriller, The Diplomat.

Portals to Our Past

(FACTUAL TV)

Genre: Factual TV, History & Biography

Logline: In a quest to unlock the human clues that open the "portals to our past," actor and historian, Ryan Vallo, tells the stories of the people who have lived before us and impacted the world, by transporting audiences to the actual sites, the real scenes where historical figures forged their dynamic lives.

Comps: The history version of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, mixing in the mystery and adventure of National Treasure and Da Vinci Code, with the world travels of Rick Steves'.