Short film idea : Casino Royalties

Casino Royalties is a short film concept born at the crossroads of Bong Joon-ho’s human sensitivity and Denis Villeneuve’s atmospheric storytelling. This essay serves as an exercise in weaving layered ideas into a dual-narrative structure in a fictional universe.

General Concept:

A poker game in an ultra-chic casino. But at each pot, the casino takes 80% of the amount automatically “to finance the dry players”. The players can never truly win—they continue to play like automatons. In the end, the House (the casino) is the only one to collect all the collective wealth.

However, an additional twist: the players can withdraw more money, but with each withdrawal, they age a little more. This irreversible mechanism prevents them from truly enjoying their winnings, as they pay an invisible price for every transaction they take.

Narrative Structure (5-6 minutes)

1. Intro — The Buy-in

Five elegant players sit at the table:

The Artist
The Merchant
The Worker
The Seductress
The Student

Each player puts down 100€ to enter the game.
The dealer, cold and mechanical, takes 20% straight off the buy-in.
The players barely react—this is the rule here, everyone accepts to play with the House.

2. The Hands Roll On

Each pot is won by a different player.
At each pot, 80% of the amount is sucked into a trap behind the dealer or a special machine, leaving the players with 20% of the total.
The winnings are therefore pitiful, and the players become more and more aware of their progressive loss.
Example: Total pot of 100€, the winner gets 20€, the others have lost.
One player wins twice in a row, but his chips decrease with each hand, and he realizes he’s getting poorer, despite his victories.

3. The Faces Change

The faces begin to tighten as the hands progress.

Some players laugh nervously, trying to hide their anxiety.
One of the players, the most lucid, wants to stop and leave the table. He gets up and heads towards the exit, but the dealer stops him with a cold look:

“Leaving the table is leaving the game. You have nothing outside, unless you’re ready to face the judgement of your peers.”

He is destabilized and returns to his seat. All the players continue playing, now caught in a downward spiral.

4. The Rewards

Cocktails flow, glasses clink, and platters of refined delicacies appear, lulling the players into a pleasant stupor. The atmosphere becomes lighter, almost unreal, as if time itself has stopped around the table.

Badges, finely decorated, are subtly handed out, their reflections barely perceptible under the dim light. The whispered words around them: “An honor reserved for the greatest.” These emblems, heavy with promises, seem to freeze a moment that never ends.

The players, their minds weighed down by the liquor and the indulgence of the moment, continue without realizing they have crossed a threshold from which there is no return.

5. The Final Bluff

One player puts all his stack in a bluff, hoping for a final stroke of luck.
The other players follow, the pot grows immense.
The House, relentless, takes 80% of the pot. But the dealer also announces that there are maintenance fees to add, and takes the rest.
There is nothing left for the winner.
At this moment, a player loses consciousness, and the dealer signals to have casino money used to revive him. He rises, like a puppet, ready to start again.

6. Withdrawals and Player Evolution

In a desperate move, one player goes to the casino counter to withdraw more money to keep playing.
With each withdrawal, he visibly ages. His face becomes ridiculed, his movements slower. It’s the price to pay for accessing more funds.
Other players, seeing the opportunity, also go to withdraw. They age, but like everyone else, they keep playing, unable to stop.
This aging phenomenon occurs subtly but irreversibly, and their condition deteriorates slowly with each withdrawal. The counter becomes a kind of temporal trap.
The casino atm even offers them token suitcases of credits in exchange for 15 to 25 years of their lives.
The more frequent the withdrawals, the faster the aging accelerates — as if the price of a token doubled with every lost decade.

7. Conclusion — The House

The players, empty and demoralized, get up, but their faces are pale.
A cart of chips is poured into a large machine behind the casino.

A soft, robotic voice repeats in a loop:

“The game is fair. Everyone has a chance. The house only wins if you play.”

In the end, when the players are too old to play the game, they are sent to the underground of the casino, where no one dares to visit and receive a check to exchange for chips with a paltry amount. This amount is supposed to help them survive until the next month, and the remaining 80% will perhaps be reimbursed monthly, until their death.

But time is against them. Their bodies and minds are exhausted. They’ve lost far more than just money.

“Children and descendants… Luck awaits you on theground floor. Come taste the freedom of the game.”

8. Final Twist

Behind a tinted glass window on the top floor, the true masters of the game observe from their sanctuary. This top floor is revealed only to those who possess a key marked with ancient symbols, a privilege reserved for those belonging to a chosen lineage or to attractive young women.

Below, the players still believe they have a chance, but everything is orchestrated. The real stakes aren’t on the tables, but up there, where the exploitation of players’ dreams and hopes takes place.

Those smiling below don’t realize that the real game is the silent manipulation, where luck has never had a place.

One of the players, now aged and worn, finally crosses the threshold of the exit doors—passing through layers of judgment from other players—into an outside world where the air itself feels hostile. Outside, a row of signs glows with softer lights, promising reduced—sometimes nonexistent—royalties. But everywhere, the game goes on. He has but a handful of chips left — each sealed in the name of Casino Royalties.

Visual Aesthetic

A plush and chic ambiance, with a James Bond meets Kafka aesthetic.
The dealer and casino employees are very polite, but inhuman, and their movements are almost robotic.
The casino feels immense but closed off, like a theater of control, where each player is trapped in an illusion of freedom.
The chips become increasingly virtual, and as the game progresses, they almost seem to dissolve, symbolizing the disappearance of value within the system.
The aging of the players is subtly shown, with visual effects and progressive changes in their physical appearance.