a slow-burn AAPI romance... primed to detonate.
Not a love story. A survival code in disguise.
A sweeping, time-jumping love story about the people we orbit and the moments that define us.
The Sleeping Man in Orbit is a lyrical romantic drama about memory, timing, and emotional gravity.
It follows two friends who drift in and out of each other's lives across decades and continents, a story about when we meet the right person at the wrong time — and one man’s quiet journey to stop circling the past and land in the present.
Aided by sequels, quotes and the shared pop culture that once held them together, he must finally decide: Is memory a map, or a trap?
In the spirit of Past Lives, a decade of near-misses across continents draws two former flames back into each other’s orbit—until a repressed 2nd-gen immigrant realizes the emotional surrogates he built are failing, and the one who truly sees him was never bound by fate.
What begins as a slow-burn romance becomes a quietly devastating psychological revelation about nostalgia, silence, and the cost of a life lived through emotional outsourcing.
...And Bill Paxton.
Act 1: The Launch - Bristol 2001
We begin the story in the early 2000s in Bristol, UK. Brian: quiet, observant, fluent in pop-culture as emotional code, meets Alina: sharp, fearless, and impossible to hold onto. They bond over bad movie sequels, immigrant childhoods, and the kind of silence that speaks louder than words. It feels like fate, but when Alina transfers abroad, it triggers a decade-long orbit of near misses and unresolved gravity.
Act 2: Separation - New York 2008
Years later, their paths cross in New York. Brian, now a successful equities trader, finds his carefully constructed life thrown into disarray when he hosts a newly single Alina, an encounter that reopens old wounds and creates new ones. Under the weight of their seemingly inescapable gravity, he invites her into another orbit — as his plus one to a friend’s upcoming destination wedding in New Zealand.
Act 3: Decay - New Zealand 2009
But in the weeks before the trip, the emotional terrain is complicated by an unexpected connection with Leah — no weight, no history, just presence — a glimpse of emotional openess and reciprocity. Brian arrives at the dreamlike wedding at a true emotional crossroads. There, meeting Alina as promised, their reunion pushes their unspoken connection to breaking point, just as the global financial crisis begins to unravel Brian’s world.
Act 4: Re-Entry - London 2009
As the financial turmoil reaches its peak, Brian loses everything. Shattered, he retreats to his adopted home in London to rebuild a life from the ashes.
Act 5: The Descent - Phuket, Thailand 2010
When Alina reaches out again — their paths collide for the final time in Phuket, Thailand, where memory, loyalty and destiny come to a head. Will Brian confront the true nature of their bond and discover his own gravitational pull before it’s too late? Or will he remain forever trapped in a VHS watch-rewind loop, while the tape degrades to static with every pass?
Every orbit deseves a constellation...
At the heart of The Sleeping Man in Orbit is a deeply relatable ensemble of souls searching for gravity across continents, decades, and shifting emotional terrain. While these characters are fictional, they have been mined from over thirty years of lived experience.
They were created based on specific emotional frequencies and backgrounds, written for a generation that grew up in that very particular period. These are the Younger Gen X/Older Millennials who came of age around around the turn of the century—a generation whose early hopes gave way to the harsh realities of economic turmoil, captured in the script through the visceral chaos of the 2008 financial crash and the anxiety of sudden job cuts.
They are a generation carrying a profound nostalgia for a pre-digital youth—anchored by the comforting hum of VHS tracking lines, CRT televisions, physical media, and the tactile buttons of a quarter fed arcade cabinet, now simply trying to hold on to the fleeting feeling of authenticity in a world of overload, filled with an increasing uncertainty and sense of existential dread.
"I think I spent a long time trying to figure out other people. Now I’m learning to show up as myself."
British-born, raised between expectations and restraint, he carries the subtle weight of someone who learned early how to keep things in. The child of immigrants, he became fluent in emotional nuance, just not his own.
A Spurs fan with a deep love of movie trivia, bordering on obsession, Brian sees the world in references and reactions — noticing the unsaid, the missed beats, the quiet tells others overlook.
In The Sleeping Man in Orbit, Brian isn’t your typical romantic lead. He’s a listener. A noticer. A man shaped as much by what he doesn’t say as by what he does.
"You ever think we’re just orbiting the same versions of ourselves?"
Alina is the kind of person who lingers in moments you didn’t realize mattered until much later. Raised between continents, she moves through the world with quiet charisma and a natural fluency in emotional shorthand.
A blend of vulnerability and poise, Alina seems like she’s always just arriving or just about to leave. Behind the charm is someone who feels deeply, even if she rarely says it first. She carries more than she lets on, including a quiet homesickness she rarely names.
In The Sleeping Man in Orbit, Alina’s presence is more than romantic memory or narrative pivot, she’s the axis of change. Her arc builds not to a tidy resolution, but to a moment of emotional clarity so raw, it echoes long after.
"You try, and I try to believe that’s enough. But I don’t want to feel like a placeholder until something else makes sense."
Leah is the kind of woman who doesn’t just enter a story, she redefines its gravity. Wry, emotionally present, and self-aware, she meets Brian in the real world, the first person in his life to truly see him and to love him not for his potential, but for who he is in the moment.
Their connection is playful, layered, mature. Through her, Brian experiences a relationship built on emotional reciprocity rather than projection. Leah isn’t just warmth or rescue — she has her own flashpoints of vulnerability.
There’s something timeless about Leah — not in what she evokes, but in how she makes you feel. She brings the kind of presence that stays with you quietly, long after the moment has passed. She doesn't echo the past, she invites something new.
"Alright sweethearts, you heard the man - algos and trade flows. Let's go!"
Amobi is that friend, the anchor in chaos, the steady pulse beneath the volatility. Nigerian-American, fiercely intelligent, and unshakably loyal, he’s the rare kind of person who doesn’t just listen, he sees straight through.
An Arsenal fan with a poet’s heart and a trader’s precision, Amobi speaks in wit, but lives in truth.
His friendship with Brian isn’t flashy. It’s built in glances, in knowing silences, in hard-earned trust.
He’s the one who calls out Brian’s blind spots, who challenges him without judgement, who stays, even when others drift.
"She's kind of everything, you know?"
Jamie is the kind of person people root for - even when they shouldn't. Earnest, open hearted, and almost painfully sincere, he moves with a confidence born not of ego, but of emotional transparency. He says what other's won't. He feels without shame.
In The Sleeping Man in Orbit, Jamie is not the rival you expect - he's something more disarming. In a world of quiet yearning and misconnection, he simply shoiws up. Sometimes, that's the most radical thing a character can do.
"Let me guess. One of you never knew. The other never said."
Stella sees things clearly - and says them too. Composed, intelligent, and deeply intuitive, she's the friend who grew up first.
The one who doesn't romanticize the past, but doesn't dismiss it either. She's not here to pick sides - she's here to tell the truth.
In The Sleeping Man in Orbit, Stella isn’t just emotional ballast — she’s the quiet proof that moving on doesn’t have to mean forgetting. Composed, clear-eyed, and fiercely grounded, she shows what it looks like to grow up and stay connected to the past — on your own terms.
"去到英國，要硬淨啲。"
Brian Snr. appears in a critical flashback — not at the beginning of the story, but at the root of it. A memory that surfaces unexpectedly, uninvited, during Brian's lowest point. His father's presence is brief, but the emotional residue is lifelong. It’s not about what he says — it’s what he doesn’t.
"Took me years to stop writing someone into mine - You’re further along than you think."
"花咗幾年先唔再將一個人寫入自己嘅故事入面 - 你其實走得比你想像中遠。"
In The Sleeping Man in Orbit, Catherine exists at the intersection of memory, insight, and emotional release.
To reflect the story’s dual cultural and linguistic worlds, Catherine will be portrayed by two different actresses in parallel versions of the film—each unlocking a distinct layer of the character’s emotional impact.
Both actresses play the same role. Both versions feature the same dialogue. But each portrayal refracts a different emotional truth—revealing how language, presence, and emotional readiness shape what we allow ourselves to feel.
Ben Wong was shaped by films where the most interesting characters were never on the poster.
Born in London, raised across time zones, and now landed in New York.
The Sleeping Man In Orbit is an exploration of memory, masculinity, and emotional dissonance, told with one foot in pop culture and the other in existential dread.
I don’t like writing about myself in the third person.
You're a producer with a taste for emotionally resonant, genre-bending, AAPI-centered stories?
The Sleeping Man in Orbit, is ready for liftoff.
If you're serious about co-producing, representing or want a script read to see what the buzz is about? Send us a signal.
You can also access the script on blklist.com if you're an industry member.
The Sleeping Man in Orbit is not just a love story. It’s a story about memory, and the quiet heroism of choosing the present over the past. In an era where audiences are increasingly drawn to intimate, emotionally rich narratives (Past Lives, Aftersun, Before Midnight), this film speaks directly to a generation reckoning with nostalgia, regret, and emotional survival.
We live in a time defined by unfinished conversations: between cultures, generations, and past-selves. The Sleeping Man In Orbit captures that in its protagonist: Brian — a man stuck orbiting a love that never fully arrived, learning, too late, that memory is not the same as meaning. It is a film about men who don’t explode, but erode. And then, against all odds, choose to rebuild.
In an age of delayed self-discovery and supporting character syndrome, this is a story about finally becoming the protagonist, told through the eyes of an emotionally complex Asian male lead.
This story fills a gap we rarely see on screen for an Asian male lead, the screenplay offers something different: interiority, longing, emotional turmoil, regret, growth. And eventually: grace.
For anyone who’s ever stayed too long, felt like the sidekick, or carried a connection that never resolved — this story is for them.
— Ben Wong
Like a lot of 80s kids, I grew up chasing R-rated genre movies I wasn’t supposed to see. In the UK, that meant BBFC-rated 18 action flicks — borrowed VHS tapes, or late night glimpses on one of the four TV channels. It was a rite of passage. Aliens was my first hit of Bill Paxton. He didn’t feel like an action hero; he felt like the only person in the movie reacting the way a real human would if dropped into an alien warzone. Hudson wasn’t the hero, but he was us. Panicked. Funny. Flawed. Human.
When his last stand came — after two acts of bravado, meltdowns, and fear — Hudson stood his ground. For a boy raised in a stoic household where emotion was treated as weakness, Paxton was a revelation. He showed you could fall apart and still matter. You could be scared, and still show up for the team.
I didn’t follow his career obsessively. Life moved on. But when he passed in 2017, it hit harder than I expected — not because of one role, but because he made me feel seen at an age when I didn’t have the words for it.
The Sleeping Man in Orbit was born from that feeling. Not just as a tribute, but as a celebration of what Paxton represented: the magnetic pull of a “supporting” character who somehow becomes the soul of the film.
Brian Lau is my Hudson — a man trying to break out of his selfimposed supporting role, finally ready to take up space. The Paxton energy runs all through the film. Some nods are subtle, some loud. All are meant to honor the greatest scene-stealer who ever lived — the guy who made losing it on screen look like the most honest thing a person could do.
We talk a lot about representation on screen. For me, it wasn’t about finding someone who looked like me. It was about finding someone who felt like me, even if they looked nothing like me.
That’s what Bill Paxton gave me.
That’s what Brian remembers.
— Ben Wong
