Replica
Created by: Felipe Martínez and Luis Villamil
Genre: Science Fiction / Drama / Police
Audience: Young Adult.
Format: 8 x 44 series per season.
Synopsis:
Manuel manages to park his big truck loaded with flowers and runs desperately to the front door of the hospital. As he enters through a room’s door, Maria meets his gaze with stone cold eyes. Only a few days ago, Maria was healthy, except for an unusual weariness. Now, a week after Maria has been diagnosed with leukemia, Manuel, the love of her life, holds her hand with a taste of goodbye that becomes unbearable for him.
While driving back to his place, surrounded by the smell of flowers, Manuel thinks about how he is going to break the news to her little daughter Monica: “Your mother is dead”. Manuel gives Monica a heartfelt embrace and whispers into her ear that her mom will be with her always as long as she carries her inside her heart.
At the funeral, numbed by condolences and handshakes, Manuel thinks that he sees Maria watching him from a distance. She has her head covered by a hoodie, and is hidden behind a mausoleum. It is her, Manuel is certain, he looses sight of her due to the new embraces and comfort words from strangers. Manuel convinces himself is just an illusion.
After a few days, Manuel receives a strange visit, a mysterious man dressed all in black hand him a file with the picture of an alleged dangerous fugitive: Maria? Not even a twin sister would look so much alike. Hiding his surprise, Manuel tells the man that he has never seen that woman. The man hands him a card and asks him to make contact if he ever sees her.
Manuel comes home one night and little Monica jumps and hangs from his neck.
You were right! – she exclaims smiling-. She never left my heart!
The little girl leads him to the terrace. Manuel is astounded, miraculously Maria is standing in front of him. The same face, her body, her eyes… her eyes?
When they are alone, the woman reveals Manuel she is not Maria. She assures him she doesn’t want to deceive him. She tells him she is a replica, built undercover in a lab where they use human tissues and mother cells to create identical copies of subjects who are terminally ill.
The Replica has a wound in her shoulder, but it heals quickly. The lab people want to arrest her to keep the true motives of the experiment hidden.
I need your help – says the Replica.
Maria explains that she is part of an experiment created by a Transnational Pharmaceutical Corporation called “Novanatura”, that illegally obtains tissues, blood samples and information about patients who suffer terminal illness to replicate them. The make trials with nanotechnology to create new medicines and medical treatments, experimenting like the Nazis did with the Jews in concentration camps.
The Replica claims that thanks to the treatment she received, she is not only free from leukemia but she has also gained superhuman abilities, which helped her, escape the lab.
The Replica asks Manuel to protect her, in exchange for that she will become exactly like Maria his wife and she will be a perfect mother for Monica.
Although, the offer attracts Manuel’s attention, as time goes by he feels guilty for replacing Maria, even if it is with a woman identical to her. The situation turns into a nightmare for Manuel, he feels he is living a life with a fake, a forgery that takes care of Monica every afternoon.
Manuel is at a crossroads. On one hand, he feels tortured by having to live with a woman he doesn’t know; on the other hand, if he asks her to leave he knows her fate will be worst than death.
What Manuel doesn’t know, is that the escape story and the danger Maria claims she is in, are lies. The truth is Manuel is part of a project that aims to monitor the relation between a human and a replica, to improve the product NOVA W 1.0, which will be up for sale soon. They want to answer a simple question: Can an ordinary man fall in love with a replica?
The “Novanatura” company wants to ease the pain for people who have lost a loved one by offering an exact replica, thanks to 3D copies of human organs and tissues and a vast system that allows them to replicate their memories, feelings through artificial intelligence.
This thriller focuses on what constitutes our identity as human beings, our essence: What could happen if we could duplicate a person?