Dec 15, 2002
This is a version of some material I emailed to Random House. I have a copy of this material deposited at the Writersguild. I might post a fuller outline, later, when I get the material copywrited. I haven't contacted Random House through a lawyer or agent and do not know whether this unsolicited concept has been reviewed.
They are looking for a sequel to the original novel, The Godfather, which would be a different plot than this movie sequel idea. I have offered to expand this script idea into a novel for them.
I have not contacted Paramount studios.

November 03, 2002
Author: Abbott Scott Sholdice

Sequel to "The Godfather"


The Godfather: IV
'In the struggle for supreme power, some men, just don't make it.'

Stars:
Al Pacino as Michael Corleone, now famous as an international financier.
Catherine Zeta Jones (subject to negotiation) as the new Corleone heiress, his new spouse Karen.

The main Photographic Promotion is a Poster with a photo on a boat in the harbour at Monte Carlo, with the Godfather IV slogan. The material here would be sufficent for a jacket cover. It descibes the movie, but does not give away the deeper plot. It can also be used on a book or Video jacket.

Poster:
Michael Corleone is reclining on the settee on the upper deck on his one hundred and eighty foot Ferretti motor cruiser. Monte Carlo is in the background. Michael's mirrored sun glasses reflect the sky, sun and bikini clad Karen (Catherine Zeta Jones). His suit beige, and shirt ruffled relaxes the blacker, funerary godfather image.
Michael recalls the past in flashbacks; Michael feels pangs of remorse in memories of his daughter's murder and funeral. Abstractedly and becalmedly he sinks into thoughts of these past events.

Final scene: Rome. Camera: Helicopter Pullback from the Roman mountaintop, the city is bathed in a red sunset against the last of the days blue sky.
It is Michael's patio at his colonnade, white marble villa. It is on a treed mountaintop with a winding drive and a cast iron fence.
In Michael's most stirring flashback he recalls his daughters' death, in his arms, on the steps at the Palermo Opera House twenty-four years before.
The camera pulls back from his eyes, then face. The shot has the blue sky around his head like a halo. Smoothly, without cuts, the pullback to a pan of Rome begins.
Some of Michael's grandchildren run to him, at play with a ball, Michael kicks it and they run after it as the pullback begins.

Plot: Anthony, Michael and Kay's son, who was singing the opera performance the night of Mary's murder, assumes the role; head of the Corleone family. Anthony has a successful career in the opera. He goes back to school and gets his business degree at Harvard to please Michael, and follow in his footsteps as Immobilaire's chief executive. He is impressed by Michael's business success and impressive personal wealth. Anthony realizes that taking the responsibilities of the mantle, chief executive at the Corleone conglomerate Immobilaire has become, for him, a blood fate. Michael appoints Anthony to the position of chief executive of the Corleone empire while he retires to be the Chairperson of the Board.

Vincent: (Andy Garcia) Vincent fades from the limelight as Michael's top person. The subtlety of business alienates Vincent from the top circle that runs the Corleone families' thirteen billion dollar financial empire. Vincent is assassinated by Corleone family enemies while on a business trip to Venice. Vincent's body explodes through his hotel rooms' balcony doors and into a canal after being hit by a shotgun blast. Vincent's body passively floats down the canal on a sunny day, gondolas passing in the background, the pool of dark blood surrounding his torso growing ever larger. Vincent's funeral is the second, about half way through 'The Godfather Part IV'. A flashback of Mary's funeral is the first.

Mary: Mary's funeral is the low point of Michael's life. He debates committing suicide with his ex-wife Kay (Diane Keaton); he holds a forty-five caliber pistol to his head, and screams that he is going to pull the trigger if Mary does not come back. Kay runs out of Michael's office in New York; they do not see each other again until a stock brokers meeting years later. Michael is emotionally crushed after solving the string of murders that has been wiping out the Corleones. Mary was killed by the same crime syndicate that bombed his first spouse, Appolonia, years before. Michael cries tears and swears revenge.

Bravo! Some good ideas there but I am not sure if Anthony would be a popular choice for running the Corleone empire....even though your outline says he goes to business school...he just seems too whimpy to become a real businessman....just my take

Also Vincent's death? Floating down the Venetian canals? Yikes! What about being on a gondola and just disembarking when getting shot - that's a combination semi Fredo, semi Sonny death

I love this new approach for a GF4 story, most people are more interested in 30's stories of the Family rise...

the whole idea of GF3 was to have the main character in the series (michael Corleone) punished for the sins he comitted in the past, the ultimate price he's paying with the death of his daughter. that's about as low as he could ever get, and he got there. there, Michael died. Not physically (which he died in 1997 according to the "official" DVD timeline), but emotionally.
that way, I can not imagine Michael being succesfull in any way ever again. not as a businessman, certainly not as a mobster and definitely not as a Family man. running Immobiliare with his son? cruising to Monte Carlo on a beautiful boat with a 30 year younger wife? having 'fun' in his life again? I can't picture him doing any of these things after Mary's death..

also, I missed a plot. Vincent becoming the new Imobbiliare boss, that's it? that can't be the plot. is he taking over from Vincent, as the new mob head too? or is the Family finaly 100% legitimate? what about subplots, where are the gangster stories...?

I do you love your cinematographic descriptions and the fact you already made up a tagline (or is it an official subtitle?) and a poster!! well done!

keep it up, I'm waiting for some more to read!

Thankyou, I gladly receive your remarks as constructive criticism and regard this site as a good tool to help me with my script.
Micheal, as he himself was with Anthony in Godfather III, was, when younger, underestimated. Santino scoffed at Micheal killing Solozo himself, Santino viewed himself as the obvious Don. Vito did not seem very happy at Santino's revenge wipeout on the Tataglias, he was upset Santino had let Micheal kill Solozo. Vito was grooming Micheal to take the legitimate mantle as a kind of front for their wealth. Anthony might seem wimpy but he is not. He is not as tough as Micheal who was not as tough as Vito, but with what each generation lacked in toughness they gained in IQ. Anthony's career in opera will be a kind of artistic springboard through which Anthony will gain an enlightedment and the realization of the opportunity that Micheal offers him to become so powerful in the legitmate Immobiliare.
Micheal always rebounds like a wildcat at violent attacks, its his history, killing Solozo for organising Vitos shooting, killing the police captain for breaking his cheek as well as his role in this conspiracy. The deeper the conspiracy, the more violent, the harder and tougher Micheal becomes. He finds out Fredo, his own brother, help set him up, underming him and almost killing him (the shooting in his bedroom at Lake Tahoe). Does this crush him, it is Micheals realisation that its 'Fredo all along' (at the Havana Ball) and in more ways then one. Micheal ends up killing him. Micheals reaction to Santinos' killing was to become Don himself. The killing of Mary, his only daughter will become Michaels ultimate button as Chi-Chi would say. Only now will Michael show what the meaning of the saying that "no one is beyond killing" means. I can't see why the point of Part 3 was to punish Micheal, possibly you could elaborate some time at your convenience. I felt punishment was Vito's fate though. I even think Vito was killed by Anthony, after scaring him in the garden, and letting him play with poisonous bug spray. Anthony sprayed Vito until he had a heart/ lung repiration thing, when Vito was passed out he laughed and still sprayed his face. Anthonys' aggression was apparent even at a subconcious level as a babe in arms virtually.
I am uneasy at revealing to much of my plot as possibly being viewed as being compromised material by Paramount Studios. I am functionaly in a legal proceedings with them over the material if I want them to purchase it.

My Godfather IV is based on the body of I, II, III in that order. The theatrical release order, the publicly best known Godfather. The last scene in Godfather III (Al Pacino as an old man falling from the chair in the garden), was in Francis Coppola's own words thrown in as an after thought. I read that in a film critcism review at the library after its release. I feel it is the story continued in the most realistic and believeable way. Not a way I would necessarily personally prefer but the dialectically decontructed aftermath. I feel Coppolas' writing can reach its limits. His script for The Great Gatsby lacked substance. Without Mario Puzo he has lost the ball in intellectualizing the future of the Godfather. I would love him to direct my Godfather IV, this is his greatest talent, he is the most Oscar winning individual in Hollywood of the 20th century, I believe, in the century of the motion picture, the newest and greatest art form of our culture.

I wouldn't be to sure about this, look around on this board and you will find lots of debating around this subject (probably the biggest unanswered question of the board)

wow, you sound realy serious. I have posted an outline (with feedback) myself on this board, but by no means I considered it to be material 'out in the open' from then.

I'm not so happy with this point of view, yet I admire this new way of looking at it, since I have not heard anyone else say this. but I don't believe the same thing. Vito was old and sick. his death was I think not a result of young Anthony spraying whatever to him, nor the fact he was scared (can you kill someone with bug spray?). grandpa was just playing with his innocent grandchild. Vito just got to excited.

Anthony laughing was 'part of the game', he probably thought Vito was still playing with him, lying on the floor. I'm just not with you on Anthony killing the Don

a certain Walter Elias Disney won 26.... Mr. Coppola won five

Pherdy, you sound very knowledgeable about the things I speak of. I agree,it remains questionable how guilty Fredo was. He seems to admit his guilt, like in the scenes in the sunroom at Lake Tahoe, he acts most damning at the club in Havana with the nude sex show, he runs from Michael, the Don, outside in the street at the start of the riot. This question of guilt interconnects with Michaels own guilt over his ordering Fredo's killing later in part III. Part of his pilgrimage for forgiveness to the Pope. This mystery is part of the lack of closure, the unresolved conflict, that part III provides inviting a Part IV.

Pherdy, I am completely serious about publishing it, and/or directing it myself. I am dreaming of it in a moving, grand, vision that is slowly mesmerizing me. 'The Godfather' along with other Coppola films including a docu-drama based on Radu Florescus work on the real Dracula, Vlad the Impaler, his execution of a Saint and final defeat at the hands of his own men. A sequel to 'Apocalypse Now' called 'TOTAL WARFARE' with the tagline from Nieztche 'The world is deep... deeper than day can comprehend'. This script chronicles Kurtz's life from a young lieutenant in the special forces during WW II untill the final scenes parallel those of 'Apocalypse Now', and end as army generals who arrive at the ancient jungle temple witness Kurtz's body, and the words 'apocalypse now' written in Kurtz's blood in the stone floor of the temple. Also Hemingway's novel 'Islands in the Stream', a poorly interpreted novel that I feel would lend itself to a visual feast in a feature length film. 'Islands' I am planning on directing myself one day. GF IV is, for me, a literary event rather that a mafioso doco-drama. I am not trying to chronicle a possible interpretation of history as an historian would. That is sort of the case with dracula, but only based on Florescu's work (he is a professor emeritus of history)(he has a web site). History is a source of knowlege of the origin in metaphysical relationships. From a literary standpoint, I don't think mixing fact and fiction works, or is particularly publishable. I don't have much experience in this field, but I have never felt I have been far wrong yet in my intuitions. Your outline is a rich source of ideas, knowledge about realities in the mob past and present. I don't agree the Vincent is developed in his charactorization to take over as Godfather, he simply is far too vapid. This is the Trilogy site, maybe that is history as far as the members of this site are concerned. Artistic creativity stems from challenging the known and excepted. I am not trying to tell people what they already know and except, but that that is beyond the edge of our common consciousness. I challenge our predjudices, illusions, preconceptions, and our egoistic sense of well being. I feel there is a lot to learn from this website. I only had accessed it for a few hours before posting my script last Sunday.

Pherdy, No I do no intend on including Anthony's arch mastermind in genesis murder of the old man while still a baby in the GF IV plot per se, but it will be there as part of the interpretation as a whole.
I guess some composer named John Williams won eight, he is still alive. Walt Disney won his it appeared mostly for cartoons. Searching the sites for the lists of oscars to compare who won the most for movie acting, directing, producing, the main areas that, I guess, I am refering to, proved very challenging. I feel I could organize the statistics better myself, what ever happened to cross referenced data bases, its the computer seach age isn't it.
I haven't got a response back from sveta van gaal, after my counter critique on her perceptions of my jacket concept. Do you see any sense in my examples, maybe the next time you review the films.