CHIANG MAI — Local expat Sean McMullin, 36, has reportedly completed a screenplay based on last week’s riot at a Mae Sot immigration detention facility, after carefully reviewing a single Facebook post about the incident and jotting down his ideas on napkins included with his takeaway order from a nearby café.
According to anonymous sources familiar with the matter, McMullin admitted he did not read the linked news article itself, but said the post’s caption and comments section gave him “more than enough context” to understand what he described as “one of the most violent prison uprisings in modern Southeast Asian history.” Based on this understanding, McMullin believes that out of “about a thousand” Chinese detainees, “several hundred” rioted simultaneously, bending metal bars with their bare hands, smashing CCTV cameras, assaulting guards, starting multiple fires, and briefly seizing control of the compound for more than twelve hours. He further claimed the riot ended only after Thai SWAT teams stormed the facility, resulting in hundreds of deaths following a prolonged gun battle and extensive hand-to-hand combat.
“It’s because their chi is so strong, right?” McMullin explained.
“I got the whole thing figured out right here,” McMullin said, gesturing to three grease-stained napkins that had accompanied his rice noodles with tofu. “This is basically the entire screenplay already.” He added that casting would be straightforward, with Tony Jaa playing the lead prison guard and Max Zhang cast as the riot’s mastermind. “They’ve worked together before, so I don’t see any issue,” he said, adding that Sahamongkolfilm International would “definitely be interested,” citing his fondness for the company’s opening logo.
A review of McMullin’s screenplay by NotTheNation confirmed that the material consisted of fewer than a dozen legible words, including “awesome fight scene here,” “riot explodes,” and “Tony gets mad,” accompanied by several stick-figure drawings. The drawings depict figures exchanging gunfire, with short dashes indicating bullets, and at least one figure labeled “Zhang” falling from a rooftop.
Asked to elaborate on the story’s emotional arc, McMullin said Tony Jaa’s character would have a son who idolizes him and somehow appears at the prison during the riot “at the worst possible moment.” “When Tony sees his son through the flames—the fire is raging completely out-of-control, right?—he centers himself against Zhang’s attacks and turns the fight around with a sick combination of Muay Thai moves,” McMullin explained. “That’s when he punches Zhang off the roof into the courtyard where he totally dies.”
McMullin said Zhang’s character would be given depth through flashbacks to a devoted wife back in Shenzhen who begged him not to leave for Burma. “But he was blacklisted by the local cadres,” McMullin said. “So he had no choice but to seek fortune abroad.”
At press time, McMullin confirmed that if offered a sequel, he would find a way to revive Zhang’s character. “He knows the oldest form of kung fu—I’m not sure what it’s called, but I can look it up later,” McMullin said. “So when he fell, he was actually just tricking everybody. He entered a Zen-like state, and all the cops and stuff thought he was dead.”
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