THE OCTOPUS
An original television series by Daniel Shafer
Season One: Seven fully written one-hour episodes
By 2098, seven oligarchs known as The Octopus own most of the world’s major cities and are deploying private armies to conquer the few public cities that remain. The prize: the natural resources needed to construct new off-world colonies on nearby planets and moons.
The first season follows two American captives in Brazil whose memories have been completely erased. They are offered a brutal bargain as they begin a journey across the war zone: fight for The Octopus and learn the truth about their pasts and their families’ whereabouts, or refuse and be reduced to slavery.One accepts, selling his soul on the battlefields of Rio as he reconstructs the life he led in the United States. The other rejects it and is enslaved, but his memories return unbidden, allowing him to relive a rebellion in the Ganymede Colony and rediscover the ideals that once cost him his freedom.
This is a dark parable about the American Dream unfolding as a dystopian science-fiction war odyssey. One man breaks bad. The other breaks good. The series combines the relentless war-zone urgency of CHILDREN OF MEN with the fractured-memory mystery of WESTWORLD and the moral crucible of THE HUMAN CONDITION.
The story also explores the machinery of extreme capitalism and exploitation, asking whether greed is the irrepressible engine of human nature or whether dignity, sacrifice, and collective resistance are equally irrepressible. At its emotional core is the enduring pull of family and the possibility that love may survive guilt, violence, and even the erasure of identity.
Awards and Recognition for the pilot:
One of 97 Semifinalists in the 2021 ScreenCraft Sci-Fi & Fantasy Screenwriting Competition, a contest with more than 2,000 entries.
One of 2,930 Second Rounders in the 2021 Austin Film Festival Screenplay Competition, a contest with 14,648 entries.
One of 400 Quarterfinalists in the 2025 Outstanding Screenplays TV Pilot Competition, a contest with more than 2,000 entries.