Fake Gnus

It’s National Geographic meets National Treasure meets Ocean’s Eleven meets Ocean’s Twelve. This globetrotting heist movie follows Nick and his partner Gertie as they pull off their most daring scheme yet. Realizing that Florida is packed to the brim with idiots itching to blow money on illegal exotic animals, Nick devised his simplest plan: steal the fuel gauge needle from the Spirit of St. Louis hanging at The Smithsonian to sell to a mysterious specialty collector for the price of two one-way tickets to Paris, where they will steal Jean-Honore Fragonard’s “The Bolt” and replace it with a hilarious “Hang In There” kitten poster. Once the crime is discovered, Gertie will submit a fake tip to the Parisian police that she overheard a man bragging that he stole the painting and will throw it off the Eifel Tower. Meanwhile, Nick will be waiting for the police to shut down the Eifel Tower, knowing that when they do it will temporarily cause displaced tourist traffic to surge at the Arc de Triomphe, which will naturally cause a massive traffic jam and commotion, leaving high end jewelry stores on the Champs-Elysees ripe for the taking. Now well-funded by fenced diamonds and gold, Nick and Gertie can head to Africa, where they hire a poacher to capture a gnu. They will then head to a remote village in Greece, where they meet an old partner in crime who can take them to a master sculptor who makes a realistic life-size sculpture of the gnu. After a quick trip to Monte Carlo, where they rig a game of craps to force a smuggler to fly them and the sculpture to Los Angeles, they pose as big Hollywood studio execs to convince a top movie special effects and makeup artist to disguise 100 wildebeests as gnus. Then it’s simply a matter of faking simultaneous earthquakes and wild fires to steal a barge big enough to carry 100 counterfeit gnus around Cape Horn and off to Florida to cash in on the sprawling illegal gnu market. Yes, I know, we forgot to say what happens to the stolen painting. We’ll explain it away in a mid-credits scene.