LINK TO PILOT EPISODE SCRIPT LINK TO SLIDE SHOW VERSION
I wrote Arroz con Pollo during my second year in NYU's graduate musical theatre writing program after being encouraged to create something purely for fun. I immediately turned to a family story about my older sister's famous pet rooster, Chico, who didn't last very long in an El Paso household full of older cousins and uncles.
As I developed the story into a screen play, and in sharing it I realized how deeply it resonated with my Afro-Latino peers. Latino sci-fi is still incredibly rare, and this story became a way to imagine us existing, dreaming, surviving, and taking up space across every timeline and universe.
Arroz con Pollo is a gift to my community and to the younger version of myself who would have loved to see a story like this on screen.
I invite any producers, agents, animators, and collaborators to reach out help create Arroz Con Pollo.Together, we can help bring this world to life for the Black and Brown young people who deserve to see themselves in every future imaginable. Even made up ones!
And fair warning: once you meet this world, you may not want to leave it.
LOGLINE
When a rigged cockfight binds a young girl’s fate to a roaming casino empire, she grows up inside the very system that stole her life and secretly uses outlawed radio signals to reunite with her mother and uncover a conspiracy transforming people into cyborg weapons.
OVERVIEW
Arroz Con Pollo is an animated retro-futurist Latin-Caribbean sci-fi series set one hundred years after a war humanity believes was fought against sentient machines. In truth, the conflict was orchestrated by a corrupt government that isolated populations, destroyed communication networks, and turned technology itself into something feared. The story follows Avianna, a girl taken into a traveling casino caravan after her father loses her beloved rooster in a brutal cockfight run by mob boss Marlo Miranda. Ten years later, now raised inside the system that stole her life, Avi secretly resists by mapping escape routes and using a forbidden ham radio to search for her mother, a rumored revolutionary who may have built a technological sanctuary beyond government control.
At its heart, Arroz Con Pollo is about family, cultural memory, and the stories societies tell to survive. The series asks who controls history, who controls knowledge, and how fear can be manufactured to keep communities disconnected from power. Rather than framing technology as humanity’s enemy, the show explores the idea that tools are shaped by the people who wield them. Liberation does not come from rejecting progress, but from reclaiming education, imagination, and collective wisdom while remaining rooted in tradition and community care.
The vision of Arroz Con Pollo is to build a living Latin-Caribbean sci-fi universe where Black and brown characters exist at the center of adventure, philosophy, humor, and epic storytelling. Blending animation, music, folklore, and speculative worldbuilding, the series aims to create a culturally grounded futuristic world that feels expansive, emotional, and globally accessible. The goal is not only to produce a 12-episode season, but to establish a world audiences can grow with, one where culture and imagination actively shape the future rather than exist only in the past.
Characters
AVI- 8 years old / 18 years old, Afro Latina(Puerto Rico)
FATHER - Early 30’s,/40’s Afro Latino (Puerto Rico)
MOTHER - Early 30’s / 40’s, Afro Latina(Puerto Rico)
MARLO Miranda - Late 50’s / late 60’s, Afro Latino (Cuba)
SANCHO - 8 years old /18 years old, Caribbean (Dominica/Philippines)
CHARDEZE - 30’s/40’s, Caribbean (Haiti)
H3CT0R - A 100 year old robot house assistant
Avi is an eighteen-year-old dreamer, survivor, and self-taught cartographer who has spent most of her life trapped within Marlo Miranda's traveling casino caravan after being separated from her family as a child. One of the few literate people in the world, Avi secretly maps every place she visits while searching for clues that might lead her home. Curious, stubborn, and deeply compassionate, she is driven by an unshakable belief that there is more to the world than the fear and ignorance surrounding her. Her journey begins as a search for her mother but evolves into a mission to help rebuild a society that has lost its connection to knowledge, technology, and each other.
Sancho is Avi's closest friend and fellow worker within Marlo's caravan. Kind-hearted, loyal, and deeply longing for a sense of belonging, he struggles with the idea of family more than any other character. Having been separated from his biological parents as a child, Sancho is vulnerable to Marlo's promises of love and stability, even when he recognizes their manipulative nature. His eventual partial transformation into a cyborg forces him to grapple with questions of identity, free will, and what it truly means to remain human.
Avi's father is a flawed but deeply human man whose impulsiveness and addiction to gambling ultimately lead to the loss of his daughter. Consumed by guilt after Marlo takes Avi and unable to face his family, he abandons his former life and wanders the wasteland searching for redemption. His tragic journey reveals the devastating consequences of shame, avoidance, and regret, as his attempts to make things right gradually lead him deeper into despair and eventually into the government's cyborg program.
Known across the wasteland only as Mother, she has become a legendary voice carried through illegal radio broadcasts that reach even the most remote corners of the world. Brilliant, resourceful, and fiercely protective, she spent years searching for her missing daughter while uncovering the government's campaign of technological oppression and mind control. While authorities portray her as a dangerous extremist luring people into a technological prison, Mother has secretly built a thriving community where technology and humanity coexist in balance. Her broadcasts serve as both a warning and a beacon of hope for those searching for a better future.
Marlo Miranda is the charismatic and ruthless owner of the Casino Caravan, a sprawling traveling empire built on gambling, vice, and exploitation. Equal parts villain and tragic father figure, Marlo collects society's discarded children and convinces himself he is giving them opportunities while simultaneously controlling their lives. Beneath his cruelty lies a lonely man who spent his life trying to build the family he never had. Over time, his dream of creating a community transformed into an empire sustained by manipulation, forcing him to become increasingly ruthless in order to protect the world he created.
Chardaze is an eccentric chicken breeder, survivalist, and conspiracy theorist whose distrust of technology borders on obsession. Living in isolation inside a bunker filled with maps, radios, and relics from the old world, he has spent years preparing for dangers that may or may not exist. Though abrasive and deeply paranoid, Chardaze possesses valuable knowledge about navigation, astronomy, and forgotten traditions that become essential to Avi's journey. His skepticism often clashes with Avi's optimism, but his wisdom ultimately helps guide the group toward Mother's coordinates.
H3t0r is an outdated home assistant robot from a forgotten era, the AI serves as both comic relief and a living reminder that history is rarely as simple as people believe. Friendly, curious, and occasionally malfunctioning, it contradicts the popular belief that all machines are dangerous. While much of its memory has been damaged over time, the AI possesses fragments of knowledge about the technological wars that reshaped civilization. Through its friendship with Avi, it becomes a symbol of the series' central question: whether technology itself is dangerous, or whether humanity simply chose to use it poorly.
SYNOPSIS
Arroz Con Pollo is an animated retro-futurist Latin Caribbean sci fi series set one hundred years after a war the public believes was fought between humans and sentient machines, though the truth is far more sinister. The story moves between Avianna at eight and at eighteen, beginning with the day her father loses her beloved rooster in a cockfight. He runs into the traveling mob boss Marlo Miranda and his casino caravan, and makes a desperate deal, and ultimately loses Avi to the same caravan. Avis' father disappears in shame while her mother turns to forbidden radio technology to search for her.
Ten years later, Avi works for Marlo as a granjadera tending his fighting roosters, quietly resisting by mapping the secret routes of the caravan and using a stolen ham radio to connect with other hidden users, including her mother, now rumored to be either a tyrant or a visionary who has built a tech driven utopia in defiance of a government that has shifted from suppressing education to enforcing literal mind control through an army of enslaved cyborgs. When Avi realizes her mother’s broadcasts contain coded coordinates from their shared childhood and learns the government is mobilizing to destroy this supposed sanctuary, she forms a team to find her mother, expose the lie at the center of their world, and free those transformed into weapons, all while grappling with what family, power, and technology truly mean in a society built on fear and misinformation.
UNIVERSE
Arroz con Pollo takes place in a vibrant Afro-Latino future where oral tradition, community, music, food, and folklore have survived long after technology and literacy were pushed to the margins of society. Across sunbaked deserts, tropical islands, traveling caravans, and colorful settlements, people navigate a world shaped by stories rather than written history.
Drawing from solarpunk aesthetics, the series imagines a future where technology is not inherently good or evil, but a tool whose impact depends on how it is used. While much of society has been taught to fear innovation, hidden communities continue to explore ways that technology, nature, and humanity can coexist in harmony. Wind-powered radios, repurposed machines, community gardens, and sustainable inventions sit alongside ancestral knowledge and cultural traditions.
At its heart, Arroz con Pollo is a story about reclaiming knowledge. The series explores what happens when literacy, history, and technology are controlled by those in power, and how ordinary people can use curiosity, education, and community to build a better future.
SEASON 1
Episode 1: Arroz Con Pollo
When eight-year-old Avi discovers her father entered her beloved rooster Chico into a deadly cockfight, a series of events leads her to Marlo Miranda's Casino Caravan, where she is taken as payment for her father's gambling debt. In the present day, eighteen-year-old Avi secretly maps the world around her while listening to the mysterious radio broadcasts of a woman known as Mother, hoping to one day find her way home.
Episode 2: Coordinates
While repairing fighting chickens in Marlo's caravan, Avi secretly expands her map and shares her growing belief that Mother may actually be her long-lost mother. As Avi and Sancho begin deciphering hidden coordinates within the broadcasts, they learn more about a government spreading fear of technology while secretly controlling citizens through brain implants.
Episode 3: Electronic Hope
Avi and Sancho discover an aging AI home assistant that challenges everything they have been taught about machines. Their search for answers leads them to a hidden bunker occupied by Chardaze, a paranoid survivalist determined to destroy the very technology Avi believes may help her find home.
Episode 4: The Ham Radio
After convincing Chardaze to reactivate his grandmother's pristine ham radio, Avi finally hears Mother's broadcasts clearly for the first time. Combining the coordinates from the broadcasts with ancient methods of star navigation, the group takes its first real step toward locating Mother's mysterious refuge.
Episode 5: Family Business
As the group travels deeper into unknown territory, they unexpectedly cross paths with Marlo Miranda. When Marlo offers Sancho the sense of family and belonging he has always craved, Sancho chooses to return to the caravan, leaving Avi heartbroken and questioning her journey.
Episode 6: Defectors
Searching for technology that could strengthen Mother's signal, Avi uncovers a horrifying government operation transforming people into obedient cyborg soldiers. Witnessing both voluntary and forced conversions causes Avi to reject technology altogether and abandon the AI companion who has become her friend.
Episode 7: Halfway Human
Determined to rescue Sancho, Avi tracks Marlo's caravan and discovers him being forcibly converted into a cyborg. She interrupts the procedure and escapes with him, but not before the process permanently alters him, forcing both friends to confront what it means to remain human.
Episode 8: Frequencies
As the AI helps save Sancho's life, flashbacks reveal Mother's desperate search for Avi after her disappearance. Through secret radio communications, Mother uncovers the government's true agenda and begins building the underground network that will eventually grow into a resistance movement.
Episode 9: Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?
Told through the life story of a single rooster, this unexpected episode traces the bird's journey to Marlo's caravan while revealing Marlo's own past. What emerges is the story of a lonely man whose dream of building a family slowly transformed into an empire built on exploitation and survival.
Episode 10: Father
Following Father's disappearance after losing Avi, this episode chronicles his years of guilt, wandering, and failed attempts to find his daughter. His tragic journey ultimately leads him into the government's cyborg program, where he becomes yet another casualty of the system he once ignored.
Episode 11: The Map
With the help of the AI and Sancho, Avi finally completes the map and identifies the destination hidden within Mother's broadcasts. But as the government decodes the coordinates as well, a race begins between Avi's small group and an army determined to destroy whatever Mother has built.
Episode 12: Electronic Hope
Avi finally reaches Mother's island and discovers a thriving society where technology and humanity coexist in harmony. As government forces launch their final assault, former enemies become unlikely allies in a battle for the future, culminating in a long-awaited reunion between mother and daughter and the beginning of a new world built on