Unfinished Business, a Hard-Working Small Business Owner and His Two Associates Travel to Europe to Close the Most Important Deal of Their Lives

In Unfinished Business, a hard-working small business owner and his two associates travel to Europe to close the most important deal of their lives. But what began as a routine business trip goes off the rails in every imaginable – and unimaginable – way, including unplanned stops at a massive sex fetish event and a global economic summit. Dan Trunkman (VINCE VAUGHN), a businessman in the apparently competitive field of mineral sales (and the specifically uninteresting trade of swarf, a metal residue) has had enough of playing second fiddle to his tough-as-nails boss, Chuck Portnoy (SIENNA MILLER). He quits the St. Louis-based Dynamic Systems and starts his own competing firm, Apex Select, taking with him the forced-to-retire numbers man, Timothy McWinters (TOM WILKINSON) and a young, positive-thinking, but slow-witted sales applicant Mike Pancake (DAVE FRANCO). After a year and a half of non-success, a deal finally appears to be at hand with The Benjaminson Group for a massive sale. Dan plans an overnight trip to Portland, Maine, for a formal handshake with the firm’s Bill Whilmsley (NICK FROST) to seal the deal. The sale – and the trip – couldn’t come a day too soon. Dan’s teenage son Paul (BRITTON SEAR), faces constant bullying, and his wife, Susan (JUNE DIANE RAPHAEL), wants to switch him and their young daughter Bess (ELLA ANDERSON) to an expensive private school. Tim could use the profits from the sale to fund a divorce from a long-dysfunctional marriage, and Mike, a resident of a house for special needs adults, wants to bring stories of his adventures to his buddies back home. Upon their arrival in Portland, Dan is confronted by Chuck, who is intent on usurping Apex’s arrangement, taking advantage of her less-than-ethical relationship with Whilmsley’s boss, Jim Spinch (JAMES MARSDEN) to swing the deal towards Dynamic. 1 But Dan convinces Spinch to let him and the Apex team present their pitch to the company’s parent firm, Gelger AG, at its home office in Berlin, Germany, in an attempt to sway things back towards Apex. Berlin, though, is packed with activity – Oktoberfest, the G8 Summit, Folsom Europe (a gay fetish festival) and the Berlin Marathon – making finding hotel space impossible: Timothy and Mike end up at a youth hostel filled with anti-business G8 protesters, while Dan unwittingly finds himself the subject of a “habitable work of art” version of a hotel room at a big museum. The team must overcome yet more outrageous obstacles to seal their deal. They must. Go out there. Get it. Bring it home. About Unfinished Business Everyone in business for themselves has one thing on their minds: how to nail down that next deal. That even goes for those in the movie business. “It dawned on me this year,” says screenwriter STEVE CONRAD (The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, The Weather Man), “that I’m never going to reach a place where it’s easy or less critical to get the next job pinned down.” When he was younger, Conrad thought a day would come when he would have relief from the weekly pressure to deliver professionally, allowing him to get home and take care of his family. But that day never came. “So I thought rather than continue to wish for it, I should write about it – that push and pull all of us live with, trying to accomplish something at work that allows you to then accomplish something at home.” Conrad’s professional life, like so many in the business world, also involves plenty of travel, something to which producer TODD BLACK, with whom the writer has worked on a number of films, could easily relate. “Steve had always wanted to tell the story of an executive on a business trip, and what we all go through dealing with our spouses, family, bills, responsibilities, and having to go and land that next job,” Black explains. It’s a constant balancing act, making sure colleagues are taken care of, while also managing/addressing things back home. “There are so many things along the way that 2 are in opposition to somebody trying to accomplish all that – in real life, in business, every day,” Black continues. “It’s relatable for a lot of people.” The writer pitched the story to Regency Pictures’ ARNON MILCHAN and BRAD WESTON, who bought the idea, which Conrad and Black continued to develop. Conrad’s story initially focused on Dan Trunkman, with a wife and family. But it occurred to him it would be interesting to see the issue from a few different angles. “It dawned on me that I might be able to gain an interesting perspective on the phenomenon of a business trip if I matched Dan with a guy who might be on his last business trip, as well as someone who’s his first one,” Conrad notes. “I wanted to look at a few characters, to get a panoramic look into the way a business trip feels across the course of a lifetime.” The leader of the group is Dan, who, like so many characters in Conrad’s stories, has many facets. “The thing that Steve Conrad does better than any writer working today is giving each of his characters so many layers,” Black notes. “Dan is flawed, but very together. Beaten down, but aggressive. Sad, but funny at the same time.” Says Conrad: “Dan has been described as being ‘common,’ but also unique. He has a clear set of obligations and principles that many of us share – taking care of his family first. But what makes him unique is that he has a full appreciation for how weird all of that can be. He’s fully aware of the monumental challenge that day-to-day life presents.” Dan has probably been on just a few too many of these kinds of trips. Starting your own business doesn’t make any of this easier. “He’s just stepped away from corporate America and started his own company, so that he can do things his own way,” says director KEN SCOTT. “That’s something we all would love to do – and he’s doing it. But Dan is discovering that it’s not that easy to make it happen.” As soon as Conrad’s script was completed, Black and Weston quickly tapped VINCE VAUGHN to play Dan. “Vince is the everyman guy that you buy both as a businessman and as a family man,” Black explains. “We gave the script to him, and he loved it and committed to the project immediately, even without a director onboard.” Vaughn had never played a character like Dan. “The stakes are very real,” the actor says. “What matters to Dan is his family. But going on the trip presents some challenges these characters have to face that are really kind of fun.” 3 The struggles are both internal and external ones. “He’s got issues at home that he’s trying to weigh in on and be helpful with, but in the meantime he’s on a work trip, with its own stresses and immediacies,” Vaughn continues. “And then, there all the matters relating to the physical journey – the trip being rearranged, having to go to Berlin, where there’s a lot of festivals and things going on. So there’s a lot he has to juggle – and that makes for a fun story.” The actor brought a unique set of qualities that made him perfect for playing a character with so many edges. “Vince brings a humanity to the comedy,” Conrad says. “He’s able to make you laugh by making comedy out of the frustrations. To be able to make somebody laugh through that is a gift.” Black agrees. “That’s one of the things that Vince does better than any actor I’ve ever worked with – he finds the most realistic moments for all of us, and then infuses fantastic comedy instincts. He understands where the joke is, but he understands it in a real way, not in a put-on way. And that makes him relatable and likable.” Accompanying Dan on the trip are two men, one older, one younger. The former, Timothy, is played by acclaimed actor TOM WILKINSON, an early choice of both Scott and the producers. “He’s someone I’ve wanted to work with for a long time,” the director says. “Tom doesn’t get to do comedy that often, and he brought something to the humor here that was very touching.” “The script was such a wonderful mixture of comedy and truthful narrative,” Wilkinson notes. “It’s irresistible from that point of view. Plus, it was an opportunity for me to do some comedy.” Adds Black, “Tom has such a grounding sense, which you can see in all his movies, and we needed that.” Timothy is at both the twilight of his career and of his marriage – and is ready to move on. “He’s been in a frustrating and unhappy relationship for a long time, but he hasn’t quite known how to break out of it,” Wilkinson explains. “Tim finds the opportunity that accidentally comes his way, via this trip to Berlin, as a sort of weird liberation that allows him to enjoy some of the freedoms he might have missed out on when he was young.” The character has some revealing moments, noting at one point that he has “never made love to a woman,” at least not in a loving way, due to his unsatisfactory relationship 4 with his wife.

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