Crossbreed

Logline: After a drunken hookup, a neurodivergent teenage farm girl falls for the son of her father’s archenemy and must rethink her obsessively-planned future when she finds out she’s pregnant. Modern comedic retelling of Romeo and Juliet.

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Synopsis:

17-year-old Juliana Caplan is just like her dad: she has big plans to breed high-caliber dairy show cattle, and she can’t stand her neighbors the Montoyas. When she and her dad discover that her best show cow’s newborn calf is a mutt crossbreed from the Montoyas’ beef bull, she’s furious. But things get complicated in the confrontation that follows when she sees 18-year-old Roman Montoya for what would have been the first time since early childhood… if she hadn’t unknowingly hooked-up up with him two weeks ago. 

 

Roman is a hopeless romantic who’s been dreaming of finding “the one” for an awkwardly long time. Despite the obstacles of their longstanding family feud and this new crossbred disaster, he’s convinced that his accidental hookup partner is actually the girl of his dreams.  But it’s not long before Juliana starts puking, and her cousin/confidante Norah realizes just what’s happened. She furnishes Juliana with a pregnancy test: Positive.

 

Juliana’s Catholic upbringing and her tendency toward anxiety attacks complicate matters further as she tries to keep the pregnancy a secret for as long as possible and figure out how to put the baby up for adoption. But as she continues to covertly meet up with the annoyingly charming Roman despite her better judgment, she unexpectedly finds herself drawn into a whirlwind secret romance.

 

The suspicions of Juliana’s brother Ty and the escalating family feud drive the lovers to attempt an elope. But their priest, Father Lorenzo, refuses to marry them in this situation and Ty stumbles upon the full truth. He forces her secret into the open, her parents forbid her from seeing Roman again, and they declare that they’ll put her baby up for adoption.

 

Juliana is distraught, but after she seeks counsel from Father Lorenzo, she enlists the help of Norah and of Roman’s friends to fool their parents into getting together to talk their issues out. Their ruse involves a rumored wedding and a shotgun loaded with blank shells. They lure the parents to the church parking lot, and all is angrily hashed out as Juliana and Roman tell their parents that they intend to raise the baby with or without help. Father Lorenzo tells the Caplan and Montoya parents that they’re acting less mature than their teenage kids, and that he has Juliana and Roman’s backs. 

 

The conflict between families is not tidily resolved, and the rest of the journey to new parenthood is not easy, but Juliana and Roman are in love and excited for a lifetime together with their baby.