a mix of There Will Be Blood, Three Kings, Sahara, Wrong Turn, and Surviving the Game came to mind with your brainstorm sesh. hhhmm.... i'll have to think on this one.

Scott, I immediately thought horror too before reading your explanation :) My variation: I was thinking this guy was a real right winger/tea bagger and thinks the majority of people are "takers" and it's his mission to rid the world of such scum, so he announces a buried treasure, knowing it will attract all the "free lunchers" and then knocks them off one by one on his mission to rid the world of the takers. P.S. These are fun exercises! Really stimulating!

Funny you mention Fenn, as soon as I read the story I thought great idea, but I thought of it as a biopic and also as an action adventure. My SIL lives in NM and she says that most locals think that Fenn is a loon--they don't believe he buried anything and believe he's doing this as a publicity ploy to jack up NM tourism.

i was just reading about his past as a pilot and segue into art and he seems worthy of his own storyline.

Does anyone remember Kit Williams?? Anyhoo... A roguish thief steals tens of millions in emeralds only to find himself in a high speed chase, and with no way to escape he buries the steelcase containing his loot in a construction site, next to a main sewer pipe. After his release from jail, he returns to the jewels he buried only to find that a police station now sits on the former construction site. Determined to retrieve his loot, he puts together a crew, but doesn't realize that one of his team is working for his original victim: a mysterious and dangerous man who's been waiting for a long time to reclaim those precious gems.

Buried Treasure: "When Susan Treasure's drug dealing husband disappears she has just a poem from a mysterious stranger, a GPS signal and three days to find him before his air runs out." Couldn't help but think of The Vanishing (the 1988 Dutch original, not the remake which I believe changed the ending, but I haven't watched), which has one of the most downbeat endings I have ever seen....and is all the more powerful with it.... Info here: http://www.imdb.co.uk/title/tt0096163/ Would recommend if you haven't seen it!

I'm seeing a family movie, with a Goonies-style gang of misfit kids. They are in bad odor for some reason--been sent to a run-down summer camp, stuck in summer school, something like that--when they get wind of all the adults looking for treasure. They sneak off to find the treasure themselves, and work out clues that have evaded the adults because of their various misfit powers, which ultimately pits them against the greedy treasure hunter who will stop at nothing to get the treasure himself--including doing very bad things to little kids.

A adventurer comes across a small alien spacecraft buried in the ice and snow of the Rocky Mountains along with a small group of alien refugees living in hiding. When an on board beacon is accidentally activated, they have 48 hrs to dig out the craft and leave Earth before their powerful enemies arrive. However, that signal was also detected by the Men in Black who have been searching for the downed craft and its crew, needing them to facilitate an important matter of alien diplomacy and save the Earth from being caught in the crossfire of an interstellar war.

PS A bonus of setting this story in New Mexico: the location completely justifies including one or more Native American and Hispanic kids, so you get a great diverse cast that doesn't look just like every other movie. And the New Mexico School for the Deaf is here in Santa Fe, so you organically include a hearing-impaired character as a part of the gang, too.

Do you remember the movie Holes, with Sigourney Weaver?

I've had it recommended but I haven't seen it.

Kids in Juvy, forced to dig holes in the desert all day by the wicked warden (Weaver)... Cool Hand Luke meets Goonies/Sandlot

A lonely boy and his family move into a spooky old house. Playing in the woods, with schoolmates he barely knows, they stumble upon an old key, buried in the ground. The key opens a mysterious and hitherto impenetrable door in his new home's cellar and leads to the Great Underground Empire, a place of great wonder and adventure. Now, when this group explores this new world they've discovered, they realize that in fact they've been chosen to fulfill a quest and that only by working together, in friendship, will they succeed.

When he inherits 1000 acres of seemingly worthless high desert, a man stumbles on a few nuggets of platinum in the ground. After he sells the nuggets, word of this discovery spreads, and soon people from all over invade his land in search of riches. However, the nuggets are only the tip of the iceberg, when it is discovered after a survey that his land holds a rich vein of Rare Earth ores worth hundreds of Billions of dollars. Now he must protect himself from the corrupt government geologist and the ruthless company CEO scheming to seize his land by any means possible.

Hi. New to these boards and loving it. My daughter and I had a great time today brainstorming off yesterday's post. It's odd how the mind works. I used to be an antiques dealer and was always surprised at the value books nobody had heard of and coins with the tiniest imperfection that were worth millions. From there (this is really odd) I thought of The Yellow Rolls Royce, a movie I didn't even know I remembered. So... I'd see this as a TV show called "Penny Lover" about a coin collector who dies at his desk while cataloging his most valuable coins. A million dollar penny falls to the floor and is put in his collection of piggy banks. From there, the we follow the penny as it's passed through the hands of those rich and poor. The theme would be how many times do we have exactly what we need but are moving too fast to see it. The penny would pass through people along the way who think it might be worth something, but something always comes along and makes it slip away - an unknowing spouse who spends it at a convenience store, a child who swallows it, a crime that puts it in an evidence bag. I'm thinking of the circle of connections in "Breaking Bad" where all are breaking bad when pushed too far and all are decent people put in the position of doing bad things for the right reason. Here it would be the connection we all share of having what we need and unable to see it, and the few who do see it come up against what they're willing to do to get it. Will the starving artist kidnap the kid who swallowed the coin or walk away? Buried treasure. This will be fun to think about tonight in my notebook and, hopefully, not be so totally random.

MOTHER LODE A group of Appalachian coal miners with creditors closing in get hold of a recently deceased old-timer's purported treasure map and decide to risk life and limb to illicitly go after the rich vein that eluded their friend.

When a Wall St. manager's new bride suddenly disappears from their Connecticut home, no one seems willing to help him find her. Days pass, until he stumbles upon a buried key to a Manhattan safety deposit box whose contents reveal a shockingly different story to the one his wife told him about her life. As he retraces her journey, he discovers he's being tracked by a mysterious group, also in search of his wife, and understands she's not close to being the innocent flower he thought he married. Now caught in the middle of a game of cat and mouse, he realizes the contents of the deposit box is only the tip of the iceberg to his wife's part, and his own, in a conspiracy to steal billions of dollars from the NYC Stock Exchange.

I like that one.