What if the world you lived in wasn't as free as you thought? What if the government that claimed to be keeping you safe was the very thing hunting you down?
These are the questions at the heart of The Enemy Is Coming — a new Australian independent sci-fi feature film currently in pre-production, produced by Shmengi Pictures.
Set in the year 2257, the film imagines a future that doesn't feel entirely unfamiliar. Earth has run out of natural resources. A single world government — Terra Corp — has risen to fill the power vacuum, expanding aggressively into the galaxy, colonising distant planets and extracting whatever it needs to keep the machine running. Sound familiar?
A story worth telling
The Enemy Is Coming begins with the destruction of the Ellison Colony — a remote mining settlement orbiting a gas giant deep in the Milky Way. A freighter, believed to have been hijacked by the Krytillians (an ancient alien race Terra Corp has long painted as the enemy), is used as a flying bomb. The colony is obliterated.
But one person survives.
Kara Banner, a young officer who has called Ellison home for fifteen years, is left for dead on the ruined planet. Tough, resourceful, and deeply capable — she's the kind of person who can build a spacecraft from scratch and knows how to stay alive when there's no corner store within a few light-years.
What Kara discovers as she fights to survive changes everything. The attack wasn't what Terra Corp told the world it was. The Krytillians weren't the enemy. And the people hunting her are wearing familiar uniforms.
As writer and director Mark Eder puts it: "When the illusion of freedom is shattered and the enslavement of mankind discovered — where do you stand?"
Built by a world-class crew
What sets The Enemy Is Coming apart from most independent productions isn't just the story — it's the team behind it.
Director of Photography Ivan Agerton brings a sharp cinematic eye to a story that demands visual ambition — from polluted skies of a dying Earth to the cold dark of deep space and the ruined landscape of the Ellison Colony.
The production design team is being finalised, with a highly credentialed designer set to be announced shortly.
Executive Producer Tony Lynch of Legend Studios has credits spanning Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, the sci-fi drama Cargo, and Police Rescue. He brings the production infrastructure and post-production expertise to ensure the film is delivered at the standard it deserves.
Special effects are in the hands of Lou Stefanel and the team at Pyromania — one of Australia's most experienced practical effects outfits.
The script itself is co-written by Mark Eder and actor-writer Robert Luxford, registered with both the Australian Writers Guild and the Library of Congress USA.
The visual world
The Enemy Is Coming draws its visual tone from two of sci-fi cinema's most distinctive franchises: Riddick and Terminator. Dark, grounded, tactile. This isn't the clean chrome future of optimistic science fiction — it's a future that's worn out, under pressure, and morally compromised.
Earth itself, glimpsed from orbit, is no longer the beautiful blue-green marble we know. The continents are still visible, but the atmosphere has turned a yellow-brown haze — the visual consequence of centuries of resource depletion. The Ellison Colony moon, by contrast, sits nestled against the sweeping scale of a gas giant, a tiny outpost of human ambition in an indifferent universe.
The Krytillian homeworld — lush, vivid, alien — stands in sharp contrast to the grey militarism of Terra Corp's installations. There's a reason it had to be destroyed.
A franchise in the making
The Enemy Is Coming is designed as the first chapter of a larger story. Scripts and concept treatments are already written for a sequel and a potential series — the universe is built, the characters are established, and the questions raised in this film demand answers.
Early script reader reports have been encouraging: "It is really easy to become immersed in the world you have created and that is not easy to do off the page. The characters are strong and clearly delineated. The imagery captures the imagination."
This is the rare kind of independent project that carries genuine franchise potential — a commercially compelling story, a world-class crew, and a production team with the experience to deliver.
Follow the journey
Production is getting underway. If you want to follow the story as it develops — behind-the-scenes updates, character reveals, world-building deep dives, and production news — head to theenemyiscoming.com and sign up.
THE ENEMY IS COMING. And now you know whose side you're on.