T
Fiction · Jerusalem & New York · 2027–2028

A Book Ready for Film & TV Adaptation

Turnover

A historian with a photographic memory is recruited for a top-secret US-Israeli initiative to document the crucifixion of Jesus. But when the mission succeeds, the political cost is heartbreaking.

Noam Shalev

Historical Thriller · Political Drama

Jerusalem, New York, Pennsylvania
2027–2028 / First century CE

Film & TV Adaptation Available

Scroll to explore By Noam Shalev · © 2026 Highlight Films Ltd.
"Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past." George Orwell · From 1984
The Story

The year is 2027. A US-Israeli joint operation, codenamed URSULA-5, has achieved the impossible: the ability to send a human being back in time. The mission has one objective — to document the crucifixion of Jesus.

The man they choose is Dr. Danny Goren: a Jerusalem historian with a photographic memory, a complicated marriage, a rescued German Shepherd, and a lifelong reluctance to leave home. He is recruited by the Prime Minister himself, pressured by an old flame now serving as US Secretary of State, and pulled into a world of 399 partners, robot sentinels, real-time AI translation, and absolute, unbreakable secrecy.

Turnover is a rare kind of thriller — where the tension isn't in gunfire, but in the moral and political earthquake that follows when the most contested moment in human history is finally witnessed firsthand. What happens next is not what anyone expected. And the cost of knowing is almost unbearable.

Meet
Danny Goren

The protagonist of Turnover is one of contemporary fiction's most compelling creations: a reluctant hero who is genuinely, frustratingly human. He doesn't want to save the world. He wants to go home to his dog.

What makes Danny cinematic isn't just his extraordinary mind — it's the gap between what he knows and what he's forced to do with it.

  • PhD in comparative historical processes, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
  • Photographic memory — documented since age 8, a national security asset
  • Recruited jointly by the Israeli Prime Minister and the US Secretary of State
  • Married to Yael, a senior Ministry of Justice official — two grown daughters
  • On daily Cipralex since Copenhagen. Hates airports. Loves his German Shepherd, Rio.
  • The first timeonaut in human history

"Now, in these crucial moments, I'm afraid. I was never supposed to be the first one."

The death of Jesus in the Christian tradition and the destruction of the Second Temple — the two events that shaped the next 2,000 years of Western civilization. He wrote his PhD on them. Now he's going to witness one firsthand.

The world's leading expert on what happened in Jerusalem in the first century CE is about to find out whether he was right — and the answer will break something irreparable.

Why This
Story Works
On Screen

Turnover delivers everything a prestige production needs: a premise you can explain in one sentence, a protagonist audiences will love, and a moral payload that lingers long after the credits roll.

01

An Irresistible Premise

A US-Israeli intelligence operation. Time travel. The crucifixion of Jesus. Three words that stop any producer in their tracks — and a story that earns every one of them.

02

Geopolitical Tension

399 Americans and Israelis. An alliance between two governments. Secrecy enforced by the threat of nuclear escalation. The stakes aren't personal — they're civilizational.

03

A Reluctant, Flawed Hero

Danny Goren doesn't want glory. He has anxiety, takes antidepressants, and was nearly talked out of joining. The gap between who he is and what he's been asked to do is where all the drama lives.

04

Personal vs. Historical

An old love — now the US Secretary of State — is the one who recruited him. His wife knows more than she lets on. His daughter just got into the army on a favor. Turnover is as much about family as it is about time.

05

Moral Devastation

When the mission succeeds, the political cost is heartbreaking. Not every truth sets you free. This is a story about bearing witness to something you can never un-witness — and what that does to a person, a government, and a world.

06

Built for Multiple Formats

A limited series could follow Danny from reluctant recruit to first timeonaut. A feature could compress it to pure thriller. The layered structure supports both — and the author wrote it that way.

The Project

Operation
URSULA-5

Codenamed 40X internally, Operation URSULA-5 is the most classified joint operation in US-Israeli history. Externally described as "advanced digital sampling of historical artifacts." In reality: the world's first successful human time-displacement program.

The technology was developed in Israel using rare metals mined from Mars. AI acceleration compressed a decade of development into months. After a successful test — described by insiders as "worthy of at least five Nobel Prizes" — both governments committed unlimited resources.

The security framework is unlike anything either country has ever built. No internet access. No phone calls outside the facility. Biometric wristbands track every partner in real-time. A breach means immediate global shutdown — and, per mutual government agreement, the risk of nuclear escalation.

399
Partners — US & Israeli citizens
49
Teams across all disciplines
0
Religious participants — by design
~33
CE — the destination

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Homeland
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US-Israeli intelligence dynamics, moral ambiguity, personal cost. Turnover lives in the same world — and goes further.

The Americans
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Ordinary people carrying extraordinary secrets. Family as both refuge and liability. Pressure that builds from the inside out.

Silence
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Faith, truth, and the devastating cost of bearing witness. What you see cannot be unseen — and cannot be shared.

Let's Talk
Rights.

If you're a producer, studio executive, development executive, or financing partner interested in the film or TV adaptation rights for Turnover, we want to hear from you.

Author — Noam Shalev
Publisher — Highlight Films Ltd.
Rights Status — Feature Film & TV Available
Location — Ramat HaSharon, Israel