The Story of Revel Pointe

It all begins in 1944…

Mick Reve, a Cajun man from Louisiana, is a crewman in a B-17 Flying Fortress, returning from an air raid in Germany. The plane is shot down over France. He parachutes into Avenay Val-d’Or, where a young woman, Marie Chastain hides him from the Nazis. While caring for him, they fall in love, bond over a shared love of stories, and when the town is liberated in October 1944 and her ailing father dies, she marries Mick and goes back with him to Louisiana.

The transition to life as an American in the Deep South is difficult for Marie who misses her family, the food, her farm, the wine… Mick, an artist, struggles to make ends meet, but Marie encourages him to continue writing his stories. She surreptitiously sends his work to a publisher, who published his book which became a surprise bestseller. This leads to a four-book deal. With his advance and a hefty loan, he starts his animation studio. The first production was a series of cartoon shorts of the Rag-Tag characters released as a special series. 

Gaspard is born followed by Alice two years later. Marie writes treatments, edits, and reviews storyboards at home. Revel released a string of hits in the 50s. After a miscarriage, Marie struggles with depression. To help her, Mick bought land by the river and made a replica of her village. This will become Revel Pointe, which officially opened to the public in 1962. To deal with his own grief, he throws himself into work. Gaspard took his frequent absences especially hard and started to act out to get his attention. Alice, in her own world, is also an artist who prefers still life to cartoons. 

By the time Gaspard is a teenager, he is a full-blown juvenile delinquent.  He gets drunk and takes the mayor’s car for a joy ride. He runs into a tree and the friend he’s with loses an eye. Because of this, his choices are prison or Vietnam. He goes to Vietnam. While there, he works as a lineman, responsible for installing radio lines. The military gives him the camaraderie and structure that he needs, but he loses a number of friends. Gaspard is wounded-in-action and comes home. It takes him a short time to recover physically, but more time to recover spiritually. He leaves Revel Pointe for Hollywood, banking on his name to get him in some doors. He wants to make raw, real films. Not happily-ever-afters that his dad shills. While there, he becomes an assistant to a bigshot movie studio executive, Rob Beavens. He learns how to wheel-and-deal and how to party. 

On a location scouting trip to Florida, he meets Bambi, an exotic dancer at a club called Scuttlebutts. Mick tells Gaspard that Marie is sick and he needs to come home to help run the studio. The conversation is tense because he also says that he needs to clean up his act. This is a family company. So, Gaspard quits his cush job, but in an act of defiance, he elopes with his new girlfriend, the stripper with a heart of gold, Bambi. In 1981, Wade is born. 

In 1981, Revel Pointe headhunts renowned corporate raider, Tilda Olsen, to takeover a cable company and turn it into The Revel Channel. She does this at lightning speed, and they start airing their back catalogue as well as three new shows in 1982. Under her leadership, Gaspard spearheads the VHS distribution company, RPVideo, which becomes a major growth field for the company. Attracted to her cold beauty and confidence, Gaspard begins an affair with Tilda, while Bambi is three months pregnant.

Tragically, Bambi dies due to complications in childbirth, and their second child, Ethan is born. Meanwhile, Tilda has kept a pregnancy secret. After telling Gaspard, they have a small, shotgun wedding for appearances, and five months later, James is born. But Tilda does not stop working to be a stay-at-home mother. In fact, she’s the polar opposite—not only continuing to run the channel, but also executive producing Revel’s first live-action and puppet film called Prehistoric!, which becomes a critical hit.

In 1985, Revel Pointe goes public, the same year, Henri, Gaspard’s second son with Tilda, is born. Gaspard works on Rose Red, a comeback animated feature film, and struggles with cocaine addiction. Meanwhile, Marie Reve passes away from breast cancer. Mick Reve is distraught and takes an extended hiatus, leaving Gaspard and Tilda in charge of operations. With no one to hold her back, Tilda lines up hit after hit in an animation renaissance with Thumbelina and Princess and the Pea. Gaspard helms Revel Pointe Studios while the new 3D animation studio, Elixir, opens in Spoonbill Springs near Baton Rouge.

Months after Elixir opens, Tilda discovers that Gaspard has been sleeping with the cleaning woman, Yasmin, and leaves him. Yasmin is a good influence on Gaspard, pushing him into rehab. Dominic, their first son, is born nine months after they marry in a grand, televised wedding in the park.

In the divorce, Tilda wins ownership share of Elixir in 1992. Tilda becomes the first CEO of Elixir, and she leads the burgeoning studio into the 1990s with the groundbreaking films, Camp Willow Creek and The Tiger Sisters.

With Yasmin’s encouragement, Gaspard takes a step back from running the traditional Revel Pointe animation studio and the theme park during an expansion period of updating intellectual property rides and experiences, but without hands-on Reve leadership, budgets balloon and quality dips. In Gaspard’s absence, the company loses money. 

One project that contributes to the dip in balance sheets is the first Revel cruise line launched in 2001. Gaspard, initially, set up a cruise line to lease the ships. Tilda recognized that owning the ships outright, while riskier, could yield a bigger return. Tilda scouts a struggling, family-owned cruise fleet and plans to raid. However, the charming Luca Conti works his magic and strikes a deal that’s mutually beneficial. Luca becomes the COO of Revel Pointe Cruise Line.

For the first few years, the balance sheets do not get out of the red, scaring the stockholders who have gotten used to healthy dividends. To assuage them, Gaspard returns to helm the ship, and Revel embarks on Operation Play-It-Safe. They make sequels and reboot old intellectual properties. Thus, ushering in a decade of creative stagnation, with the exception of Island of Sirens. Unfortunately, a senator from Kentucky deemed this film controversial for having an eco-terrorist agenda. It did well, but not as well as they hoped it would in the box office, further entrenching the Play-It-Safe approach. 

In 2010, first-born son, Wade, joins the Marine Corps. He is sent to Afghanistan and is killed in action a year later. Wade was the heir-apparent, taking this time off to serve his country but planning to return and kickstart a new era of Revel Pointe innovation, starting with an immersive Island of Sirens experience. The stress of running the company and losing his son takes a toll. Gaspard suffers a stroke, and he must take a medical leave of absence. Mick Reve, wanting to ensure this remains a family company, had a line of succession drawn up years ago. Instead of reverting control to the board and Tilda, Ethan Reve is named interim CEO. It is now up to Ethan to save his brother’s project and honor his family’s legacy.