Some journeys
change
everything.
WHITE THUNDER
Original Feature Film
Treatment Complete · Screenplay in Development
Written by Kyle Meiers
When a polished cruise-ship entertainer misses his ship in Juneau, his desperate race through Alaska to catch up becomes an unexpected journey through grief, connection, and what it really means to find your way home.
THE STORY —
Three days.
One moving ship.
A thousand
miles of Alaska.
He knows ships. He knows schedules. He knows how to hold a room and exactly what song comes next. Performing isn’t just his job—it’s who he is.
Then he misses one.
Stranded in Juneau while his mother and a career-making opportunity continue north without him, he has three days to catch a ship that isn’t waiting. His way back involves a stubborn Alaskan entertainer, a series of increasingly complicated plans, and a thousand miles of unexpected detours.
Along the way, he falls into the orbit of a place—and a person—whose life seems built around everything his isn’t: community, belonging, and the ability to stay.
What begins as a race to get back on schedule becomes something much bigger—a journey that forces him to confront what, and who, he can’t leave behind.
ON BOARD —
He isn't
traveling alone.
His mother is aboard the ship on what would have been her 40th wedding anniversary. His father is gone.
Around his wrist is his father’s watch—a small piece of the man who never got to see the world his son now moves through for a living.
While he scrambles to get back to the ship, his mother begins an unexpected journey of her own—making friends, finding trouble, and discovering that there may still be parts of herself she hasn’t met yet.
For years, movement has meant freedom. Another ship. Another city. Another audience. Another horizon.
Music has always been how he makes sense of the world. But this time, the right song hasn’t come yet.
THE TITLE —
White
Thunder.
n Alaska, the sound of a glacier calving can roll across the water like thunder.
In the story, one such moment becomes a fault line—between what was supposed to happen and what happens instead.
For a man who has spent his life performing other people’s songs, this journey finally gives him one of his own.
I knew the world.
The story came later.
INSPIRED BY A REAL JOURNEY —
I spent several years performing aboard cruise ships, living out of a suitcase and watching the world pass outside the windows.
During that time, I made many journeys through Alaska—from the ports and waterways of Southeast Alaska toward the glaciers and mountains farther north. I took photographs, met people, kept moving, and eventually went home.
But Alaska didn't really leave.
Years later, pieces of that experience began finding their way into a story. The places are real. Some of the circumstances have roots in things I knew. The characters and the journey they've taken are now very much their own.
THE FILM —
Drama. Comedy.
Music. Romance.
A missed ship. A thousand miles of Alaska. An unexpected companion. And a song waiting to be found.
Funny until it isn’t. Tender without getting precious.
White Thunder begins in the polished, slightly absurd world of cruise-ship entertainment and gradually opens into something more intimate and expansive.
It’s a story about grief, an unlikely connection, and the moment music turns a journey into something more.
A journey through an extraordinary landscape that keeps asking a very ordinary question:
What if the life you’ve built to feel free is also the thing keeping you from staying?
—WHITE THUNDER—
Original Feature Screenplay
Written by Kyle Meiers
INTERESTED IN THE PROJECT?