"Crisis Moon" Challenges Hollywood

Industry veteran and Hollywood screenwriter-turned-author/publisher Michael McGruther (Tigerland, The Puddle Club) releases space thriller CRISIS MOON and launches a call to action to indie writers nationwide.

The novel is a rally against conventional Hollywood. First penned and marketed as a screenplay, McGruther encountered producers enchanted by the lure of sizable Chinese box office ticket sales who were bent on tamping down patriotic, American-themed stories by openly embracing anti-American sentiment and supporting foreign government censorship.

“We’re entering a new frontier. Audiences are now awake to the fact that Americans are at a crossroads in exposing — and bucking — media influence on pop culture. Original ideas through indie books are rising as a commodity as emergent authors, through the power of independent publishing, challenge the traditional box office. I know of two studios in the process of reverse engineering already-purchased screenplays into books to capitalize on the trend,” said McGruther. “I’m encouraging all screenwriters to rethink their approach — it’s about producing, owning and controlling your personal intellectual property now. Winning the pop-culture cold war takes strong resolve and the effort of American storytellers to satisfy a vast, forgotten audience.”

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CRISIS MOON is a fast-paced thriller which imagines a not-too-distant future where Communist China covertly occupies the far side of the moon in violation of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. What they discover changes the future of geopolitics on planet Earth.

About Michael McGruther

McGruther began his filmmaking career with the original screenplay Tigerland (2000), directed by Joel Schumacher and co-written with Ross Klavan. The critically acclaimed screenplay was nominated by IFP/West for Best First Screenplay and by the Political Film Society for the PFS Award in 2001. Credentials include partnering with Jersey Films and Universal Studios on two features: his original science fiction adventure titled Lightspeed and a coming-of-age drama titled Sentenced To Nature, based on a New York Times article by author Charles Siebert. His publishing company, Hosel & Ferrule Books launched its first publication, The Puddle Club, to critical acclaim, named one of the “Best Indie Books of 2018” by Kirkus Reviews.

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