FADE IN:

EXT. AIRPORT PARKING LOT

LIAM NEESON kicks off his MURDER SPREE by destroying a bottle of GIN.

LIAM NEESON

Damnit! If only my chronic alcoholism were an Armenian mobster. How am I supposed to solve a problem that I can't shoot in the face?

LIAM is approached by a well-tailored NEANDERTHAL MAN.

ANSON MOUNT

What? No no, it’s me Anson Mount! Surely you remember me as that guy Jason Statham killed in that one Jason Statham movie! Or that one canceled TV show no one watched! Or that one currently airing TV show that no one watches--

LIAM NEESON

Yeah like anyone cares. Now I’m still a bit buzzed so remind me what the plot is again?

ANSON MOUNT

But didn’t you read the script?

LIAM NEESON

After Battleship the only thing I read are the zeros on my paycheck.

ANSON MOUNT

Well apparently you’re a U.S. Air Marshal with a tragic past and I am your superior officer with a tragic future who’s here to make sure you don’t get drunk and fuck up, but in order to maintain our cover we must pretend like we don’t know each other.

LIAM NEESON

Way ahead of you pal.

INT. PLANE

LIAM uses his COP RADAR to notice only the passengers who will have LINES later on.

NATE PARKER

I’m an asshole who is an ass!

SCOOT MCNAIRY

(whiny)

I’m a geek who is whiny!

COREY STOLL

I’m a baldy who is also bald!

OMAR METWALLY

I’m a Muslim who is an obvious red herring!

JULIANNE MOORE

And I’m a nosy ginger! Mind if I sit by you, Liam?

LIAM NEESON

Well yes in fact I do mind a great deal so if you would get lost I’d really apprecia--

JULIANNE MOORE

(getting all up in his business)

So tell me about your daughter. What’s her name? What’s her favorite color? What’s her hair smell like? I’m a lonely neurotic with a dozen cats so this isn’t creepy or suspicious at all.

LIAM NEESON

Does Stand Your Ground work on an airplane? Please tell me it does.

LIAM receives a text message from THE TERRORIST.

FLOATY TEXT

Good evening, Liam. I am a terrorist and I will kill a passenger every 20 minutes if you don’t give me $150 million dollars. Mmhahaha!! And by “kill” I really mean “make YOU kill”.

LIAM NEESON

Clearly I'm still intoxicated. So, is this a girl? What are you wearing?

FLOATY TEXT

This is serious Liam! I have the villainous superpower of being able to predict exactly what you will do and how you will react to any and every situation I set forth despite doing nothing except sending texts the entire movie. A “Textorist” if you will.

LIAM NEESON

Anson? Is that you? I swear to God if this is you I'm going to break your fucking neck.

LIAM meets ANSON in the BATHROOM.

LIAM NEESON

Jeez I hope no one saw us come in here together. I’d hate for anyone to think I had such low standards in men. So are you the Textorist?

ANSON MOUNT

No way, Liam. I mean sure I’m smuggling a cereal box full of cocaine in this briefcase but I swear it’s not

(neck is broken)

LIAM NEESON

Whoops.

FLOATY TEXT

Haha Liam! Made-ya-kill! Made-ya-kill!

LIAM NEESON

Eee, this is certainly going to look bad on my next job interview. If I had a quarter for every time I reflex-killed someone I'd have like six dollars by now. I must alert the captain. But only about the Textorist, not the dead guy who I just made dead.

CAPTAIN LINUS ROACHE

Liam, sit your old crazy drunken ass down. Jesus, you’re like 62 years old. How the hell are you a bankable action star?

LIAM NEESON

I see death in your future. Hey red, help me find the Textorist.

JULIANNE MOORE

Are you sure you can trust me? Anyone who saw the trailer already suspects I'm a villain. And didn’t the Textorist ask you about your daughter right after you told me about her?

LIAM NEESON

You’re right, I need another potential love interest just in case I have to put you down later. One of the sexy stewardesses perhaps?

LUPITA NYONG'O

(raises hand)

LIAM NEESON

Haha, nice try Lupita. I need someone who Hollywood will actually try to turn into a bland leading actress. Lady Mary, I’m tagging you in.

MICHELLE DOCKERY

But how can I help?

LIAM NEESON

By unlocking the mini-bar. Killing makes me sober. Now I’ve narrowed down a small list of passengers who were texting while the Textorist was texting me his text of threatening text text, so my plan is to bully each suspect until he confesses. Hey Omar, you look like a terrorist. Convince me you’re not.

OMAR METWALLY

I’m actually a doctor you prick.

LIAM NEESON

Good enough. Hey baldy, you’re a terrorist right? So just confess.

COREY STOLL

I’m a cop you moron.

LIAM NEESON

Shit, this is a lot harder than I thought it would be. Hey geek, convince me you’re not a terrorist.

SCOOT MCNAIRY

(whiny)

I’m actually a teacher.

LIAM NEESON

I fucking hate teachers. PUT YOUR GODDAMN HANDS UP MAGGOT!

LIAM beats THE SHIT out of SCOOT and humiliates him in front of everyone while an ANNOYING TEENAGER FILMS IT.

PASSENGERS

Hey! This guy Liam is acting like a fucking terrorist!

LIAM NEESON

Your eyes are lying to you. Sit down and be quiet please.

PASSENGERS

Fuck you!

LIAM NEESON

If you continue letting me beat on passengers the airline will give everyone free flights for a year.

PASSENGERS

Well in that case beat away!

LIAM NEESON

Wow, that actually worked?! Are people really stupid enough to let themselves be potentially hijacked in exchange for free airline tickets?

PASSENGERS

For a year? Fuck yeah we will! We’ll let you pee gasoline in our eyes and light it on fire for a free trip to Maui!

This is PROBABLY TRUE.

Meanwhile:

CAPTAIN LINUS ROACHE

(is poisoned via blow dart)

(WTF?)

FLOATY TEXT

Haha Liam! Your feeble attempts to stop me have failed! BTW, I want my $150 million dollars transferred to an account in your name. Oh, and that annoying teenager has uploaded footage of you assaulting passengers and acting like a gun totting dickwad so everyone on the ground thinks YOU’RE the terrorist! Haha!

LIAM NEESON

That's bullshit! No one would believe that!

FLOATY TEXT

Well you did try to blow up Gotham that one time.

LIAM NEESON

Oh my God you're right! How do I even know you're real and that this isn't just some elaborate Tyler Durden/Project Mayhem mindfuck?

FLOATY TEXT

Because that would be interesting.

JULIANNE MOORE

Liam! I just found out Nate knows how to do tech bullshit, specifically with phones!

NATE PARKER

If you give me your phone I can back trace the carrier signal and hack the inter-wi-fi-web and piggyback the host line of the IP address of the--

LIAM NEESON

Yeah yeah yeah, just shut up and do it already before I fucking murder you with fire.

NATE makes THE TEXTORIST’S phone ring, which belongs to a RANDOM PASSENGER.

LIAM NEESON

Gotcha bitch! Now before I ask you any questions

(manhandles Random Passenger)

Ah, that hit the spot. Say, you don’t look like a crazy textorist. This can only mean...

RANDOM PASSENGER

(dies from blow dart poisoning)

(seriously, WTF?)

LIAM NEESON

Damnit! A patsy! And I didn’t even get to kill him myself! What else could possibly go wrong? Except of course for a manifesto being sent to the cops in my name threatening to blow the plane up with a bomb.

THIS HAPPENS.

LIAM NEESON

Great, now I have to find a bomb AND be sober! Better get to it then.

(pause)

Oh screw it. If I’m going down with this plane I want to be REALLY high off my ass while it happens.

LIAM prepares to snort up all of ANSON’S COCAINE when he discovered a BOMB hidden inside of it.

LIAM NEESON

Attention everyone! I just found something deadly on the plane! A bomb!

PASSENGERS

Phew! As long as it’s not snakes! Oh BTW, we’ve all been watching the news and it says you’re an evil hijacking piece of shit, so hey everybody let’s jump his ass!

LIAM fights all 150 PASSENGERS all at the SAME GODDAMN TIME.

Naturally, LIAM KICKS ALL OF THEIR ASSES. The LEAGUE OF SHADOWS is NO JOKE.

LIAM NEESON

Oh Jesus, I’m beating the very people I have sworn to protect. How about I just lay down and you all pile up on me and we’ll just nod and say you beat me, okay?

THIS HAPPENS.

PASSENGERS

Let’s kill the bastard!

SCOOT MCNAIRY

(holding Liam’s gun)

Wait! I trust Liam! Yeah, sure he may have bullied me and beat my geek ass purely on speculation, but clearly he’s no terrorist!

LIAM NEESON

Scoot’s right! I’m trying to save you people! Yes, I’m a drunk and a major fuckup, and damn proud of it, but you see my daughter is dead. She got sick and I was too busy working to be there for her, such is the cause of my guilt and inner turmoil that drove me to be the alky screw up you see before you this day. Forgive me?

(puppy dog eyes)

PASSENGERS

(glamoured)

Aww!

LIAM NEESON

Ah yes, a dead daughter backstory excuses sheer incompetence 100% of the time. Now we can't just throw the bomb off of the plane because the plot won't let us so I need you guys to help me disarm it.

PASSENGERS

But we don’t know how!

LIAM NEESON

That’s good, I’ve always wanted to punch an explosion in the face. Just leave the bomb in the back with the luggage, we can still land a plane that’s missing its ass. But we have to drop to under 5,000 feet first. Can you do that, Co-Pilot?

CO-PILOT

No! The authorities on the ground told me you’re a dangerous terrorist and that I shouldn’t listen to you!

LIAM NEESON

(waves hand)

Do as I say.

CO-PILOT

(glamoured)

Yarp. But Liam, two fighter jets are flanking us with orders to shoot us down if we make any sudden moves!

LIAM NEESON

Just tell them to go microwave a dick and eat it.

CO-PILOT

Uh... alright?

This is the ACTUAL PLAN.

JULIANNE MOORE

Liam, it looks like the airline has wired the $150 million bucks into the account with your name on it, so what’s the Textorist waiting for? Shouldn’t the plane be blowing up by now?

LIAM NEESON

Yes. Clearly the Textorist is on a suicide mission and wants to go down with the plane. Hey Annoying Teenager, let me see that cell phone footage you shot of me acting like a lunatic earlier.

LIAM watches the video and sees SCOOT pass the TEXTORIST CELL PHONE to RANDOM PASSENGER despite SCOOT clearing having his HANDS TUCKED FIRMLY BEHIND HIS BACK the ENTIRE TIME. A real DAVID BLAINE, this one.

SCOOT MCNAIRY

(pulls gun)

Surprise Motherfucker! I’m the Textorist! But I also had help!

LIAM NEESON

I knew it! Julianne you no good soulless ginger!

SCOOT MCNAIRY

Um, no, I mean Nate.

NATE PARKER

(pulls gun)

Haha! I also know kung fu! But seriously Liam, you didn’t suspect me even after I was revealed to be a computer genius and all that incriminating manifesto just happened to be sent out right after? Are you retarded?

LIAM NEESON

Great, the ONE TIME a cop doesn’t profile the black guy. So why are you guys doing this?

SCOOT MCNAIRY

(whiny)

Because we must show America that it’s still not safe from terrorism by exposing this airline’s security weaknesses!

LIAM NEESON

Haha, no seriously, what's the real reason?

SCOOT MCNAIRY

You see, my father died on 9/11 so I’m honoring his memory by becoming the same kind of terrorist that killed him.

LIAM NEESON

Haha, no seriously, what's the real reason?

THAT IS the real reason. UGH.

LIAM NEESON

I'd say that motive ranks about 9.5 on the Dumbass Scale. But how does that explain why you’ve gone so far out of your way to frame me to look like a terrorist? Did I drop your little brother out of a window on Christmas or something?

SCOOT MCNAIRY

(whiny)

No, that would make too much sense! You being a notorious alky fuck up who lost a child was all the excuse I needed to ruin your whole entire life to feed into my political agenda, the primary goal of which appears to be making 9/11 victims out to be evil mass murderers.

LIAM NEESON

Okay fine, pretending for a moment that's not the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard, how did you manage to sneak the bomb into Anson’s cocaine without him realizing it? And how did you poison the pilot with a blow dart without him feeling it? And what if when I fought Anson he had actually gotten the upper hand and killed me insteadBHAHWHHAHAH HAHAH! Yeah right, like THAT was going to happen. So Nate, what exactly is your role in all this?

NATE PARKER

Oh, I’m just trying to get paid. I'm also a former soldier so Scoot's agenda also involves making U.S. veterans look like assholes.

LIAM NEESON

But you guys can't collect the $150 million if you go down with the plane.

NATE PARKER

Which is why I planned to jump out of the plane with the aid of this parachute I could have only gotten on-board by keister stashing it.

LIAM NEESON

But you can’t parachute off the plane with those fighter jets watching and you can’t get your money if you blow up with the rest of us, so lets say you deactivate that bomb, hmm?

NATE PARKER

Well if you insist

(is shot by Scoot)

SCOOT MCNAIRY

Sorry Nate, I forgot to tell you that my political message only works if we suicide ourselves. TIME TO DIE LIAM!

But the CO-PILOT suddenly dives the plane! LIAM becomes weightless and uses THE FORCE to grab his gun and shoots SCOOT right in his WHINY FOREHEAD.

NATE PARKER

Hey! I’m still alive over here!

BOMB

I'll fix that!

THE BOMB EXPLODES! But it’s one of those “only kills Nate and no one else while also only damaging a small part of the plane” bombs.

The EXPLOSION comes RIGHT AT LIAM!

LIAM NEESON

(punches)

EXPLOSION

Ooph!

(hands over lunch money)

(runs away)

The plane CRASH LANDS and everyone gets off safely by riding the obligatory INFLATABLE SLIDE to the ground.

PASSENGERS

Wee! Totally worth the hijacking!

LIAM NEESON

Hmm, even though I saved the day the authorities still have every reason to believe I’m a terrorist and should be taking me into custody at any moment.

This DOESN’T HAPPEN.

LIAM NEESON

Really? Well, I guess Stand Your Ground really does work on airplanes.

JULIANNE MOORE

So Liam, it seems the last cliche the movie has to play is that I was secretly working with Scoot all along...

LIAM NEESON

(preparing to go into Kill Mode)

JULIANNE MOORE

But I wasn’t!

LIAM NEESON

(powers down Kill Mode)

Really? But everything you did and said played right into Scoot’s plan. It was even your idea to let Nate help me out!

JULIANNE MOORE

I'm guessing I was actually evil in a previous draft of the script but then they decided you needed a prize for all your hard work and just made me a bland love interest instead of a terrorist mastermind.

LIAM NEESON

As it should be. So I guess that means we’re dating now, right?

JULIANNE MOORE

(swoons)

Oh you handsome lumberjack you! Of course we’re dateHEY WAIT A FUCKING MINUTE! YOU ACCUSED ME OF BEING A MURDERER AND TERRORIST LESS THAN AN HOUR AGO! AND GINGERS DO HAVE SOULS YOU DICK!

LIAM NEESON

(waves hand)

I said we’re dating now.

JULIANNE MOORE

(glamoured)

Yarp.

END