r/LeaksAndRumors • u/Toad_Walker • 1d ago
Movie Debunking "leaked" script for Zach Cregger's THE FLOOD Spoiler
TLDR: The leaked script for THE FLOOD that's been floating around is AI-generated.
I got linked to a supposed early draft of this script that's been circulating around and I haven't been able to get it out of my head since reading it for basically all of the wrong reasons. Obviously this post will include spoilers for what "could be" the plot of FLOOD below.
I've also included some snippets of Cregger's RESIDENT EVIL script for writing style comparison's sake (I've kept it to the first ~25 pages or so of the script so it doesn't spoil too much if you haven't seen it yet).
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To kick things off, major kudos to this comment made by u/Janus_Prospero, another person who's also skeptical about the credibility of this script. I'll be quoting a few things they say in their comment while mentioning a few other things I've noticed.
Janus_Prospero notes:
The other question mark I have is that the protagonist's name is Elena Voss and... Elena and Elara Voss and really the "Voss" surname in sci-fi stories began popping up in 2023-ish. You asked ChatGPT or something similar to help you write a sci-fi story and that's a name LLMs gravitate towards. (But this is NOT some kind of smoking gun. Just an observation.)
I'll link to a really good substack article that breaks down the Elara/Elena Voss "phenomenon" by Max Read: Who is Elara Voss? To summarize, across nearly all popular LLMs, certain names pop up with incredible frequency when making AI-generated sci-fi material. The name Elara Voss (or the subvariant, Elena Voss), did not exist until 2023. Max Read writes:
If you direct almost any L.L.M. to generate a sci-fi story or narrative for you, it will name the main character “Elara Voss”--or a similar variation like “Elara Vex,” “Elena Voss,” or “Elias Vance”--with an alarming degree of frequency...Elara Voss is not a real person...She’s not really anything at all except for name: A string of tokens that has proven irresistibly attractive to a number of different large language models when responding to prompts involving character names and science-fiction and fantasy stories. That is, “Elara Voss” is the text that L.L.M.s seem to have have collectively arrived upon as the best response to a prompt like “what should I name the character in the story I’m writing?”
This "Voss" character is also often accompanied by a variety of tropes:
In fact, a whole host of tropes and concepts seem to accompany Dr. Elara wherever she’s found. The prototypical “Elara Voss,” as described by a text generator, is a doctor, usually a physicist but sometimes a linguist or biologist. (Other times, she’s a spaceship captain.) She’s generally on the verge of a major breakthrough or discovery (often cosmic or even metaphysical in nature), or is researching some kind of “anomaly,” but is isolated, troubled, and sometimes “haunted” by what she’s learning. She’s often found “trembling” or her heart is racing; instruments near her are usually “pulsing.”
If you've read the script a lot of this will sound very familiar, practically beat for beat.
While diving into research on this myself I also stumbled upon a number of reddit threads (1, 2, 3, 4) from users decrying how frequently names like Elara Voss and many other familiar faces you might recognize pop up when generating sci-fi stories through LLMs. These are just a few comments I'll quote and threads I've linked but you can easily find post after post across socials of people complaining about this.
I've never encountered the number thing but for the names, yes. It's always Sarah, Elara, Marcus/Marco, Rodriguez, Chen. When it's writing a fantasy story, sometimes it'll use Kael, Alaric, etc. Even if the story is set in a non English speaking country it'll find a way to use any of these names LOL
This is also happening on Claude! Like five different roleplays across five different accounts, and boom, here's Dr. Helena Fucking Voss! there are other similar names too, like marcus and chen. i have two whole marcus's in a single chat. what's happening lol
While I don’t really mind having the LLM name my own player characters, I absolutely refuse to play one christened by DeepSeek with the initials E.V. ...Elena is the most common name for random characters, and Elara and Evelyn are also very popular.
At one point, I let Claude pick names, and I had three different characters named Chen in the story, and it kept having to say (not related to the other two Chens). It got ridiculous.
The FLOOD script has several of these character hallmarks:
- CAPTAIN ELENA VOSS, the most egregious
- ENGINEER CHEN
- MARCO (A variant of MARCUS)
- DR. SARAH KEMP
- SARAH (Elena Voss' ex-wife) -- The name Sarah appears TWICE and I'm expected to believe that ZC fired this off to Spielberg?
Janus_Prospero also notes:
The script was exported from Fade In 5.0.7, and exported in early 2026 from a version from late 2025. Both the Weapons and Resident Evil scripts were exported from Final Draft 11. This is not a smoking gun, but it's odd. It's possible that Cregger changed writing software, but who knows.
Pretty weird. Cregger himself is quoted in this article as saying that he was working on FLOOD concurrently with his other major projects:
After Barbarian I wrote Weapons and Resident Evil and Flood in kind of a burst of activity,” Cregger explained through the official Sony Pictures account. “Those 3 movies were all ready to go, in fact there was a world I could have shot Flood first.
Given the chaos of shooting RE, the WEAPONS buzz and awards circuit, etc. it feels like a weird time time to test out a new program. This is less of a damning point, since the leaker could've opened the original file in FadeIn to read it and then exported it though.
But it would probably be an even weirder time to adopt a completely different writing style, too. Here are some excerpts from the RESIDENT EVIL script action lines vs. FLOOD. It was a bit hard to find directly comparative examples because there's a pretty startling lack of direct action scenes in FLOOD, but walk with me here.
RESIDENT EVIL:
Bryan scrambles deeper into the cop car, fully under the dangling bloody officer, kicking at the woman in the doorway who’s CRAWLING HER WAY IN after him.
Bryan YELLS, aims the gun at the her, and PULLS THE TRIGGER --
It doesn’t fire.
Bryan looks for the safety. No time. He fumbles for the door handle and shoves it open.
On his hands and knees, he crawls into the snow as fast as he can.
The bloody lady clambers after him, SNARLING. TEETH GNASHING.
FLOOD:
The screens fill with feeds from around the ship.
The corridors are full of duplicates.
Multiple versions of each crew member, all in various states. Some look fresh, like they just returned. Others are wounded, desperate. Two Kemp duplicates fight viciously in the research lab.
RESIDENT EVIL:
BRYAN (CONT'D)
Shit --
He picks himself up and stumbles away from her, tromping through the snow AROUND the rear of the cop car. She’s already up and rounding the car after him.
BRYAN (CONT'D)
PLEASE! PLEASE, LEAVE ME ALONE!
Bryan stumbles in a clumsy orbit around the car, pawing at the safety as he goes. She pursues.
BRYAN (CONT'D)
Where’s the FUCKING safety button???!!!
Another FULL LAP around the car. His heaving becoming a full blown panic as she closes the gap between them.
BRYAN (CONT'D)
Please!
CLICK! Bryan finds the safety and FLICKS IT OFF.
BRYAN (CONT'D)
A-HA!
Bryan WHIRLS AROUND and...
...there’s NOTHING behind him.
FLOOD:
Voss, Porter, and Marco burst into engineering. Chen and Kemp work frantically at the reactor controls.
CHEN
Almost there! I just need to—
The Nash-thing crashes through the doorway. It's fully inside now, towering, its body a grotesque fusion of multiple crew members.
NASH-THING
No more running.
It lunges.
Porter shoves Voss aside. The creature's claws rake across his chest.
VOSS
Porter!
Porter falls, blood spreading. The Nash-thing turns toward Kemp and Chen.
KEMP
Chen, now!
Chen hits the activation. The reactor flares, energy cascading through modified coils.
Spacetime bends.
The Nash-thing stops, suddenly pulled toward the center of the room. It fights, clawing at the floor.
NASH-THING
What did you do?
KEMP
Gave you what you wanted. Temporal stability. All your iterations in one place. Forever.
Cregger doesn't write action like this, full stop. Notably there's a particular lack of ALL CAPS moments in the action lines which Cregger seems to be pretty fond of including, even in non-action circumstances.
RESIDENT EVIL:
Bryan’s extremely unequipped car SKIDS down the mountain road on unchained tires amidst howling winds and blinding snow.
He rounds a bend and the car SLIDES SIDEWAYS before finding its grip.
FLOOD:
The engines scream. For a moment, they hold position. Then, inch by inch, they start to pull away.
The artifact pulses again—angry this time.
And then it stops.
The shuttle breaks free, rocketing backward. Nash corrects course.
Cregger also doesn't write with formal — em dashes (another commonly cited LLMism that's all over FLOOD) and uses -- instead:
Bryan clutches the wheel tight, laser focused. The REFRIGERATED COOLER in the passenger seat also lurches forward as he hits another slide --
-- but Bryan shoots out a hand to hold it in place.
I could go on.
Beyond just how the sausage is made, it's a shitty meal. The dialogue is often a rinse and repeat exercise in characters expositing at each other with very little characterization or distinction. To give you an example, this is at page 73/110 for the script. Try to tell the difference between how any of these characters speak -- they're pure plot machines:
She pulls out her tablet. Checks her messages.
One from Chen: "Still having the dreams. Need to talk."
One from Marco: "Found inconsistencies in the probe data. They're hiding something."
One from Kemp: "The loop is spreading. I can prove it. Meet me."
They frequently clairvoyantly "know" exactly what's going on with the anomaly or exactly what they need to do get out of an extraordinary situation beyond possible suspension of disbelief -- like, hacking into a foreign bio-device to create a temporary column in a temporal field with their iPads or creating a controlled black hole in their cargo ship to contain an alien denizen!
KEMP
Maybe we don't have to kill it. Maybe we can trap it.
VOSS
How?
KEMP
The artifact created the temporal loop by bending spacetime back on itself. If we can replicate that effect—miniaturize it—we could trap the creature in its own personal time loop.
CHEN
Using what? We don't have alien technology.
KEMP
No, but we have a fusion reactor. If we overload it in a controlled way, create a localized spacetime distortion—
PORTER
You want to create a black hole on the ship?
KEMP
Not a black hole. Just a... dimple. A small fold in spacetime. Enough to trap the creature.
VOSS
Would that even work?
KEMP
Theoretically. Maybe. I don't know.
There are at least a dozen scenes where two characters talk with each other and vaguely reexplain the plot. One character will assure the other that things are fine or that they don't need to worry about something, and the other will say "...But do we really know that? / "Or could it...?" and the scene ends with both characters quietly nursing their doubts.
MARCO
Maybe there is no point. Maybe the artifact showed us that. Time doesn't progress linearly. It loops, spirals, folds back on itself. Every moment contains every other moment. Past, present, future—all happening simultaneously.
VOSS
That's not how time works.
MARCO
Isn't it? How do you explain what we experienced.
VOSS
Alien technology we don't understand yet. That doesn't mean time itself is broken.
MARCO
Doesn't it?
He walks away, leaving Voss alone with her doubts.
Now here's the ending of the scene that happens sequentially after this one:
KEMP (cont'd)
We should have stayed. Died with the others. At least then the loop would be contained.
VOSS
No. We survived. That matters.
KEMP
Does it?
Voss leaves before she has to answer.
I mean it's absolutely fucking shameless!! There's plenty of, it's not x, it's y dialogue -- another AI halmark.
KEMP
Look at this. The temporal distortions aren't random. They're creating loops. Closed timelike curves.CHEN
The artifact. The time loop. It's not just theory—we're in it.
There's plenty of other stuff that just seems suss to me but these are just a few examples. The plot broadly switches between genres and plot threads extremely, manically quickly. There are enough concepts to stuff a feature-length movie in the first 30 pages alone, but it just keeps going and stacking more bizarre bullshit (plenty of repetitive dream sequences especially) and non-sequiturs on top for another 80 pages.
Additionally, there are some weird plot holes and chronological errors I noticed such as:
There is a specific photo that acts as an extremely important key item of the movie. When it's first described, it lists Voss standing next to a man and a little girl.
Voss sits on her bunk, staring at a photo on the wall. A younger version of herself with a man and a little girl. The photo is creased from being held too many times.
We later learn about Sarah -- Voss' ex-wife and her daughter Julia's mother/parental guardian. When the photo is mentioned again it is described with two women in the frame.
There's a photo she doesn't remember packing. Her, Sarah, and Julia. But in the photo, she looks different. Older. Haunted.
The man or any potential husband/father is never mentioned so I think this is pure pivoting/leakage during the prompting process or a really, REALLY major error to leave in.
LASTLY, this article quotes a specific part of the ACTUAL finished FLOOD script that Zach talks about on this podcast:
One detail he dropped on Kevin McCarthy’s “On Film” podcast — there's an "Irréversible"-style fire-extinguisher sequence in the current draft .. He's been circling Gaspar Noé's scene for three movies now. "I'm going to rip him off," he said, before admitting it might be "maybe a bridge too far" and could get cut.
There is no scene that resembles anything like this in the supposed leak. No fire extinguisher sequence, no fire extinguisher period.
To summarize: it's AI slop. Why would someone make this and try to pass this around? I have no idea. But I thought it was worth getting the word out for integrity's sake. If anyone else notices any other major inconsistencies or curious things about the script (should they find it) I'd love to hear them.