A Historical Epic Drawn From True Events

TheBETRAYAL

He was sent to destroy them. She dared him to become something more.

England  ·  Holland  ·  The New World  ·  1607–1621
The Story
The Logline

When the Crown sends a nobleman's son — a celebrated London actor moonlighting as an informant — to infiltrate and betray the Separatists fleeing to Holland, he falls in love with the one woman brave enough to see through him — and must choose between the destiny his father built for him and the conviction she awakened.

A le Carré double game inside the Mayflower story — ending at the first Thanksgiving.

I

The Shore

1607. A congregation flees England by night — and the Crown's torches ignite the fog. A father is shot on the mudflats. A seven-year-old girl kneels beside him. And on the deck of the King's ship, a ten-year-old boy watches — and does not look away.

"Remember." — "Remember what?" — "Everything I'm not allowed to forget." Edmund & Remember
II

The Performance

1620. Edmund Margesson is the finest actor in London — and the Crown's most gifted informant. The King wants the hidden press that printed sedition into Scotland. The hunt no man will see is given to the one man who can earn trust he does not deserve.

"A thousand strangers in love with a man who does not exist." The Fortune Theatre, London
III

The Conviction

Leyden. Among the hunted, Edmund finds the woman from the docks — the courier the Crown never saw coming. She sees through him in eleven seconds. What she awakens costs him everything he was raised to want: he burns his reports, funds the press he was sent to destroy, and tells her the truth that should damn him.

"Everything frightens me. I do it anyway. That's the whole of what conviction means." Remember
Day Three
"I was on the ship."
Edmund — The Confession

He could have hidden it forever. Instead he hands her the worst fact in his possession — and stands still for the sentence.

IV

The Crossing

Sixty-six days. A cracked main beam saved by the printing press's great iron screw — the machine that printed the truth now holds the ship together. A man overboard hauled back from the dark. And on a barrel-head off the wrong coast, forty-one true names sign a covenant that outlives them all.

"Most men sign to be remembered. Sign it because it's true." William Bradford — the Mayflower Compact
V

The Table

The Dying Time takes half of them. Spring brings Samoset's open hand, Squanto's mercy, a treaty kept for fifty years — and a sail on the horizon named FORTUNE, carrying the last father anyone expected. It ends where America's memory begins: three days of harvest, two nations at one table, and no one performing anything, for anyone, anywhere.

"Lost at sea, I'm afraid. I'll so inform His Majesty." Charles, Earl of Suffolk — the lie that saves them all
Based on Documented Events

History Did the Plotting

The spy story is the invention. Nearly everything it moves through is documented — from state papers, court records, and William Bradford's own hand.

1618 — Documented
The Perth Assembly pamphlet, printed secretly in Leiden and smuggled into Scotland in wine casks, enrages King James against the hidden press.
1619 — Documented
The King's ambassador leads a real manhunt across Holland for William Brewster, the press's fugitive elder.
1619 — Documented
Thomas Brewer, the press's financier, is taken in Brewster's place — held under Leiden University's protection and treated leniently, while Brewster vanishes.
1620 — Documented
The Speedwell fails twice. One hundred and two souls fold into a single ship: the Mayflower.
1620 — Bradford's Own Account
Mid-Atlantic, the main beam cracks — and is saved by "a great iron screw" the passengers brought out of Holland. History never says what it was for. The script does.
1620 — Documented
John Howland is swept overboard in a gale and hauled back alive by a trailing halyard.
Nov 11, 1620 — Documented
The Mayflower Compact is signed on a barrel-head off the wrong coast. Forty-one names.
Winter 1620–21 — Documented
The Dying Time: half the company dead by spring. Burials at night, graves smoothed flat and unmarked so watching eyes could not count the living.
March 1621 — Verbatim
Samoset walks out of the treeline alone and says, in English: "Welcome, Englishmen."
March 1621 — Documented
The treaty with Massasoit — plain terms, plainly kept — holds for fifty years. Longer than any other treaty signed in that century of the world.
Nov 1621 — Documented
The second ship to reach Plymouth was literally named the FORTUNE — the same name as London's famous playhouse. The script did not invent that. It couldn't have.
Autumn 1621 — Documented
A three-day harvest feast: the surviving colonists and some ninety Wampanoag at one table. The ending America already knows by heart.
The Accuracy Ledger

The screenplay ships with a scene-by-scene ledger tagging every beat true, composite, or invented — so the question "how much of this really happened?" has a documented answer in every meeting.

The Players

Spies, Saints, and Strangers

Edmund Margesson
Edmund Margesson
The Spy Who Fell
London's finest actor. The Crown's secret weapon. The only role he's never played is himself.
Remember Leggett
Remember Leggett
The Courier
Orphaned by the Crown on a shore she cannot forget. The one woman brave enough to see through him.
Charles Margesson, Earl of Suffolk
Charles, Earl of Suffolk
The Father
"I spent your whole life wanting you to be useful. I never once stopped to ask if you were good."
Robert Dudley
Robert Dudley
The Rival
Ten years wanting to be Edmund. One chance to destroy him. A hunter's eyes behind a courtier's smile.
William Brewster
William Brewster
The Ghost
The most wanted man in the King's world — hiding in plain sight behind a hidden press.
The Company
The Company
102 Souls · 41 Names
Saints and strangers, printers and martyrs — the families who paid freedom's first installments.
The November Engine
No film owns Thanksgiving.
This story ends at the first one.
01
A date that never expires

A November release isn't a weekend bet — it's an annuity. Holiday films come back every year, and this is the only script with a claim on the fourth Thursday of November.

02
The group-sales machine

Sound of Freedom turned $14.5M into $250.7M on church and group theatre buyouts. That machine already gathers on this holiday.

03
Four quadrants, one ticket

A spy thriller for date night. Documented history for schools. Faith — woven in, never preached — for the church bus. A love story at the center.

04
The economics

$15–25M against tentpoles costing ten times more: break-even is one strong weekend, and the 3×+ return pattern lives in exactly this budget lane.

Why Now

The Audience Is Already in the Seats

0
of Americans say faith has a role in entertainment (HarrisX, 2026)
0
one-year growth in faith titles on Prime Video (Ampere)
0
of U.S. adults are Christian — the decline has leveled off (Pew, 2025)
0
6-in-10 Americans engage Christian media monthly (Barna, 2026)
ComparableBudgetBox OfficeReturn
Sound of Freedom (2023)$14.5M$250.7M17.3×
The King of Kings (2025)~$25M$83.5M3.3×
The Forge (2024)$5M$29.7M5.9×
Young Washington (2026)$20M$46.8M2.3×
The Passion of the Christ (2004) — the ceiling$25M$622M24.9×

Every faith title since 2018 returning 3× or better was budgeted under $26M — and the ones that overspent the lane (Cabrini: $50M in, $20.6M out) prove the discipline matters. THE BETRAYAL's lane: $15–25M. An epic that happens to be Christian, not a Christian film — 77% of Americans say faith-based stories have broad appeal beyond the faithful (HarrisX, 2026).

The Ask

Read the script that ends
at the first Thanksgiving.

"I would rather lose you being honest than keep anything by lying to you again."

Request the Script

Written by candlelight · Anchored in the record