I made me own rough outline a while back and posted to GiantessCity.
https://giantesscity.com/forum/viewtopi ... 2#p1534921
For those without an account....
I would probably recast everyone if I wrote this today. Though I don't know with who. Maybe keep Depp? The idea was Tim Burton was going to direct after rumors he might direct Aot50FtW came out.
Oh and i never finished the outline. No idea how it would end! Lol
Cast/Characters
Jenna Ortega – The Titular Shrinking Woman. She is a shy and reserved collage student.
Milly Bobby Brown – Jenna Ortega’s roommate. She is more outgoing than Jenna’s character but far from a party girl.
Milly’s Mother – into MLMs. Very poche Not above using shame or to attack someone’s insecurities to make a sale.
Jenna’s Conspiracy Friend – Into conspiracies and feminism and socialism. Not to be portrayed as an out of touch and judgmental loser. Immediately doesn’t like Milly’s mother.
Jonny Depp – Chemistry Professor
General Themes: Social media addiction, personas, and the dangers of following social media trends. Respecting introversion as a valid way to be. Social peer pressure. Take potshots a MLMs.
Important story moments:
This is what I have so far.... I'm not sure how it should end yet....
• Movie will begin with a woman coming home from work with a couple of sample bottles from her work. She will leave them on the counter and begin getting herself ready to make dinner. Her two daughters are home and the elder is making cringy tiktok dance videos. Her little sister is trying to get her attention. Mother is in the other room busy with whatever while the girls bicker. Younger daughter tries to use samples from mom’s work and the cap comes off spilling the while thing onto her. She tries to tell her mother, but she is on her phone looking up recipes or something. She runs to her sister (visibly a bit shorter in baggier clothes) and tells her sister she needs help cleaning something up. Older sister says she wishes the younger sister would just disappear. Little sister goes into kitchen to reach paper towels and can’t reach them. She looks up with a look of concern. Mother comes into kitchen later seeing the mess and a pile of cloths. Assumes daughter went to bathe after making mess. Bathroom is empty. Mother confronts older sister and asks is she’s seen her younger sister. Older sister barely acknowledges her mother and says she hasn’t. Cut back to pile of clothes and zoom in and fade.
• We establish Jenna’s character is reserved but not unsociable. She has friends who are like minded and mannered. Nerdy, bookish, and generally happy with herself and her circle of friends. Her and Milly’s character hit it off and we see they’re likely to get along. Milly’s mother barges into the room and is judgmental and practically negs Jenna into taking a free sample of a few of the products her MLM is peddling.
• Jenna and Milly talk about their home lives. Jenna seems to come from a supportive home while Milly’s mother is judgmental and a control freak. Milly is afraid of becoming mean spirited like her. She tells Jenna she has a blog where she posts about her narcissistic mother. Jenna only really uses social media to follow the news and keep in touch with friends and family. Milly is more into sharing her life experiences and following other people she doesn’t know.
• We establish that the room’s ceiling light has a chain that broke and is a little shorter than it should be, and both girls need to get on their tiptoes to reach it. They joke about never making it in the WNBA.
• Jenna experiences some social situations which make her feel insecure or embarrassed. When she gets back to her dorm she uses some of the spray she got from Milly’s mother and it makes her skin burn so she immediately washes it off. She puts the bottle back on her nightstand and goes to sleep. We see a fly enter through her window and land on the spray bottle, which has a shitty, leaky cap. It sips a drop of the fluid that has leaked and then flies away. As it flies it’s difficult to tell if it flies further than we can see or if it shrinks to nothing.
• Jenna wakes up and Milly is watching a true crime video on tiktok or youtube where a young woman calmly describes a 10 year old girl vanishing without a trace while her mother and sister where just in the other room (from the first scene). Jenna goes to turn on the light and can’t reach. She hops a little to reach it and gets ready for class. All of Jenna’s clothes are a tad loose but not noticeably.
• Jenna walks to class with her conspiracy friend. They meet Milly’s mother again who asks Jenna if she tried the spray. Jenna says she did and it burned her skin. Milly’s mother says they have a cream for skin burns and to be careful about spreading slanderous information online. Jenna’s conspiracy friend runs circles around Milly’s mother in a conversation where she deconstructs how MLMs feed on the insecurities of their salespeople and their customers. She uses words like “reductive” and “belittle” and after getting flustered and storming off Milly’s Mother accidentally leaves a sample bottle on a nearby picnic table. Shortly after another girl comes by and takes it.
• Jenna goes through a school day and during every interaction she’s constantly adjusting her glasses or her shirt the waistline of her pants.
• Jenna returns to her dorm and dreads confronting Milly because of her confrontation with her mother. Milly, however, is thrilled and wants Jenna to guest star in a video to talk about her encounter with her mother. She does so and the girls have a good time roasting Milly’s narcissistic mother.
• The next morning Jenna has to jump to reach the pull string of the ceiling lamp and when Milly walks out of the bathroom Jenna realizes she’s looking up at Milly. They both have a moment and Milly asks the question “Did you get shorter?” Montage of Jenna trying on clothes and all of them being fairly loose. Jenna is starting to freakout while Milly starts recording a like Tikok where she says her roommate is shrinking. Jenna freaks out that Milly is recording this but eventually calms down.
• Cut to a tiktok video. Milly banters while she shows off her and Jenna’s school IDs showing both of their heights as being 5’3”. She then shows Jenna and herself standing next to each other, and Jenna is noticeably shorter. It then cuts to Jenna standing against a wall with a few tick marks above her head and Milly making a fresh one. The one at the top says 5’3” and when Jenna walks away Milly pulls out a tape measure. That annoying fucking tiktok voice says “OH EM GEE, SHE SHRANK 4 INCHES!” as the tape measure shows the mark is just a hair above 4’11” tall.
• As the day goes by Jenna’s is crowded by people who keep trying to compare their height against her. During her chemistry class a bunch of people outside who keep staring in through the door, which disrupts the class to the point the professor demands to know why they’re all there. One of them says “We’re here to see the incredible shrinking woman!” another girl, who is short, shouts “Jenna we love you! Hashtag short girls rule!” and the professor chases them away. The professor confronts Jenna and she admits she’s shrinking. Her professor does believe it at first but when he measures her she is 4’9½” which makes Jenna start to panic. Milly and Jenna’s conspiracy friend shows up and vouch for Jenna’s story, that they use to be 5’3” and her conspiracy friend says this needs to stay a secret or they might experiment on Jenna.
• The chemistry teacher helps Jenna walk through identifying what she may have come in contact with that could be causing this. They settle on the body spray, but Milly and her mother have both used it and neither of them have been shrinking. Jenna mentions the irritation and they wonder if it might be an allergic reaction or if there is a another factor where the spray serves as a catalyst.
• Conspiracy friend wants to make a video update warning about the MLM products, but Milly warns the company is super litigation happy and will bury her if she tries. They argue about it for a but then Jenna suggests they keep it a secret because “what if someone took that information and used it to deliberately shrink people”. They all agree that for now, they should keep it on the downlow until they have more information and to keep creeps for using it to kidnap people.
• Milly eventually makes the connection that the mother from that true crime she was watching the other day also worked for her mother’s MLM and wonders if the daughter who disappeared had shrunk so small she vanished. Jenna wonders if this will happen to her and panics. They wonder why it’s taking so long for her and speculate it must be the dosage. They bring up the faulty spray caps for the bottle as well and wonder if the girl got hit with a huge does. Fade outside to a bulletin board that shows a poster with the girl who took the spray bottle a few scenes ago that says “have you seen my roommate? She’s been missing since…..”.
• Jenna becomes a bit of an internet celebrity and documents her shrinking journey.
• Jenna goes to a party at a sorority house and gets super uncomfortable by the attention she gets from guys. She’s around 4ft even by this point. The sorority sisters call the party after someone makes a really inappropriate move on Jenna. The girls in the sorority are all really supportive to Jenna and feel terrible she had such a bad time. They offer to have her come over another day and they’ll have a super fun spa day.
• More videos where Jenna talks about her size.
• Jenna decides she wants to go home. If she’s going to shrink away to nothing she wants to be with her family. However, her parents are on a cruise ship so they won’t be home for a few weeks. Milly and conspiracy friend promise to take care of Jenna.
• Another girl at school starts to shrink. In just an hour she has shrunk a whole foot. Through social media videos she and her friends record the ordeal. By the time she’s a foot tall her shrinking is fast enough to be noticeable. She shrinks smaller and smaller while her friends watch begging and pleading for it to stop. She shrinks faster as she gets smaller eventually shrinking into her little napkin dress. When one of the girls picks up the dress there’s a little dot under it that dwindles until it’s imperceptible. Jenna and Milly are shook. Jenna starts to full on panic attack. Jenna’s phone rings and it’s her chemistry professor. He needs to see her now.
• Jenna is maybe 3’6” now. The Professor urges them to come forward with the fact the body spray is linked to the shrinking. They agree. Sitting on a stool, Jenna talks about he spray and urges people not to use it because she thinks it’s connected.
• Jenna wakes up the next day when Milly’s mother practically kicks down the door and starts chewing Jenna out and accusing her of being a liar and just generally insulting her. Milly flips out on her mother and unloads into her. A crowed of other girls from their dorms gather to watch and they cheer on Milly and then help chase her mother way. Jenna is wearing an oversized shirt and cries while Milly comforts her. Jenna says she wants to dowse herself in a whole bottle of the spray and just disappear. Milly comforts her and talks her out of it. Jenna is probably a hair over 3’2” tall now.
• Jenna goes back to the sorority house for her spa day and the girls are really good to her and we have a montage of a happy, 3’ tall Jenna getting pampered and having fun with the girls. While giving Jenna a makeover, one of the girls goes back to her room and grabs a bottle of the body spray that started shrinking Jenna and the cap falls off and she splashes the whole bottle all over herself. She isn’t on social media so she hasn’t been following the whole saga. She comes back and her clothes are noticeably looser. The other girls notice and soon it’s clear she’s shrinking before everyone’s eyes. She panics and the girls gather around her to watch. Conspiracy girl thinks fast and a she dwindles smaller and smaller she takes out a Petri dish and urges the girl to climb into it for her own safety. Soon the girl is speck and then gone. The sorority girls are freaking out and Jenna explains they need to get rid of products from that MLM. The girls don’t believe her, lots of them use that product and none of them have shrunk. A fight is about to break out when Milly says something to get the girls to realize Jenna isn’t their enemy. They go through her room and they all try to find some connection. It’s anxiety medication.
• Anxiety medication. A medicine that helps these introverted girls fit into a society that demands they reshape themselves to fit into broken molds. A “fix” for the overly stressful way society is structured. The beauty products. The anxiety medicine… it’s all there to change you. To reduce you…. Or something. Writers better than I (who are unionized!) will come up with something more poignant for Conspiracy friend to say here.
• In the lab The Professor looks under the microscope. Surrounded by the sorority girls. The scene is tense. Eventually he looks up and shakes his head. There’s no sign of her.
• Jenna is just under 3ft tall. She makes another video. She talks about watching a girl shrink down to nothing. She breaks down and starts lashing into herself, hating how small and pathetic she’s becoming. She curses that her shyness and need for anxiety medication was what made her shrink. She digs into herself and curses her own inability to operate in a society where only she has a problem with how utterly insane it is.
• The next morning Jenna is around 2’8” tall. Her shrinking is accelerating. Milly comes in full of furry with a folder. She explains her mother is suing Jenna, on behalf of her MLM. Jenna is despondent. She doesn’t seem to care. She’s going to shrink away to nothing soon so why does it matter. Milly tells her to not give up hope. One of the girls from the sorority is with her and she’s in her senior year of law and her holder sister has been a defense lawyer for several years. They’re going to end Milly’s mother’s entire career.
• I do not what this movie to end with a protracted, feel-good court scene. That’s so 90s Oscar-baity. Jesus fucking Christ make it go away.
• Milly’s mother, who is absolutely anti-science and in a fucking cult can’t handle the fact that Jenna is right. She takes a single pill of anxiety medication and dissolves it into all of her remaining samples and relabels them. She gives them to a fraternity house telling them to gift it to their girlfriends or use it at their next party on the girl they want. She gives it to girls out on the street and tells them to use it when they get home. She dumps a whole bottle out on an annoying dog at a cafe while her owner gets up to get her drink and it shrinks away to nothing before our eyes. The 3rd act begins.
• We see a flash of several videos from tiktok or Instagram where girls show off that they’ve shrunk. Varius sizes from 4ft to less. We see the montage expand and at first it’s all girls saying how scared they are, more videos tile onto the screen and they all overlap with audio. We hear things like “I just want it to stop” “I’m scared” “She just kept shrinking” “she’s gone! I saw it with my own eyes!” “Chat, do something, it wont stop” and then all of those videos are abruptly cut off and a male voice laughing who then says “It was awesome! She just kept shrinking! That’ll teach the bitch to reject me!”.
• Jenna is now 2 feet tall. She is surrounded by her friends, the sorority sisters, and the professor. They talk about how bad this all is. They talk about how girls afraid to leave their rooms because some jerk might have those tainted bottles. There are a handful of girls who have clearly started to shrink. They discuss how Milly’s mother must be behind this. Society seems to be unraveling around them as women shrink away to nothing at various rates. Jenna is quiet for most of the discussion. She has fallen into a deep depression. She admits she stopped taking her anxiety medication and hopes that it will help
). 
