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THE BLACK HATCHET

graphic novel & film PREVISION

CREATOR - WRITER - PRODUCER - ARTIST - MICHAEL TRACHIOTIS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY - OVERVIEW - LOGLINE  - SYNOPSIS

PBS interview with screenwriter Michael Trachiotis  

ONCE UPON A TIME IN  SAN FRANCISCO_BLACK HATCHET_PAYBACK_COVER_©_MICHAEL TRACHIOTIS 2025

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

 

TITLE: Once Upon A Time in San Francisco - The Black Hatchet

SCREENPLAY LENGTH: 118 Pages

GENRE: Historical, Action, Adventure, Thriller, Revenge, Martial Arts

BUDGET: TBD

SHOOT: TBD

OVERVIEW

Based on real people, true stories and events.

 

Think “John Wick” with a “Fist of Fury” melded with “The Punisher” running amok with two razor sharp hatchets in “Gangs of New York" except it is the savage and outlaw 1906 Barbary Coast.

It is a high-octane-hair-rasing-heart-pounding-action-adventure-historical-thriller featuring eye-popping-blood-squirting-limb-severing “Hatchet-Kung-Fu” combat!

 

LOGLINE

 

A ruthless vigilante wielding dual black hatchets of revenge, embarks on a heroic, against-all-odds quest to rescue is kidnapped sister from sex slavery and execute the vile Hatchet Men who took her, littering the alleys with their bloody body parts.

SEQUELS

 

Once Upon A Time in SAN FRANCISCO – The Werewolf Monk

​​

Once Upon A Time in San Francisco – The Green Dragon

Once Upon A Time in WORLD WAR i – Ghosts in the Trenches

ONCE UPON A TIME IN  SAN FRANCISCO_BLACK HATCHET_PAYBACK_COVER_©_ MICHAEL TRACHIOTIS 2025

SYNOPSIS 

 

Malcolm Hutchins, a 26 year-old cowboy fails to stop Tong Hatchet Men from kidnapping his 14 year-old sister, Rose, as they stroll to a cattle auction through the San Francisco Barbary Coast. He barely survives the ambush and is left with a gruesome hatchet gash on his face - a permanent reminder of his catastrophic blunder and festering guilt.

 

While recuperating on his family’s cattle ranch near Mt. Shasta and planning his rescue expedition with his blood brother White Crow, leader of the Okwanuchu and masters of black obsidian hatchet weaponry, his home is incinerated and parents burned alive by highwaymen.

 

Filled with guilt, shame and rage, Malcolm, who learned White Crane Kung Fu from the Werewolf Shaolin Monk Grand Master drifter, rushes back to San Francisco and ferociously hunts for Rose using his dual black blades of justice to mercilessly slaughter Hatchet Men who get in his way.

 

Just as he gets close to finding the Pale Devil, the nasty Shanghai Green Dragon Tong albino enforcer who runs the Barbary Coast gangs – and the villain who engraved the Black Hatchet's face while kidnapping Rose – an 8.3 earthquake pulverizes the metropolis followed by a four day inferno that scorches it to near annihilation.

 

Enlisted to fight the fires, the Black Hatchet's suicidal acts of heroism save trapped victims, however he is swallowed by a collapsing and burning building.

 

Miraculously he survives, plunging into the underground network of pirate tunnels. Bruised and battered, as the Black Hatchet searches for an escape, fate guides him to the Pale Devil, trapped in a hideout with three captured girls he is trafficking to Shanghai with the Werewolf Monk, a wanted outlaw with a bounty on his head.

Then . . .

PLEASE CONTACT MICHAEL TO READ THE ENTIRE SYNOPSIS AND SCREENPLAY, PLUS THE OTHER STORY LOGLINES, OUTLINES, TREATMENTS AND SCRIPTS

ONCE UPON A TIME IN SAN FRANCISCO_BLACK HATCHET_WANTED_16_© MICHAEL TRACHIOTIS_2025.jpg
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