EXCLUSIVE: Deadline’s annual Read the Screenplay series, highlighting awards season’s most talked-about scripts, kicks off this year with Clean gameChloe Domont’s debut feature film that Netflix acquired following its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival.
Domont, whose TV directing credits include Billion It is Suitsmade her debut as a writer and director with the film, which was generated by T-Street and the MRC’s Emerging Filmmaker Program and counts Rian Johnson and Ram Bergman among the executive producers.
The script for the relationship thriller follows Emily (Image: Disclosure)Bridgerton(Phoebe Dynover) and Luke (Alden Ehrenreich), who work together at a cruel financial company and are also a couple. When a coveted promotion comes along, the pair’s once supportive exchanges begin to sour as power and gender dynamics shift irrevocably, forcing them to confront the true price of success and the limits of ambition.
Dumont said the film’s themes resonate with this era.
“The most exciting thing is I saw couples who watched the movie together and you saw them talking about it afterwards,” Dumont said during a panel for the film at Deadline’s Contenders Film: Los Angeles. “Then the guy will say something and the woman will be like, ‘Oh, is that what you thought?’ You just know it’s going to be a great drive home.”
Related: ‘Fair Play’ Review: An Intense Descent Down a Slippery Slope as a Young Couple Descends into Relationship Hell
Eddie Marsan, Rich Sommer and Sebastian De Souza also star in the film, which hit theaters in late September and was released on Netflix on October 6, when it ranked first in its debut week on the streamer and subsequently spent three weeks on the top 10 worldwide.
Read the script here:
