Jimmy Prosser – 2026 Pilot Finalist (Hour)
Reunification
During the Korean War, a pacifist bicycle courier working for the U.S. Army is sent deep into North Korean territory on an intelligence mission, but when he abandons the mission to rescue his girlfriend’s father, he’s forced to kill for the first time.
Jimmy Prosser is a writer/director from San Diego now living in Los Angeles. His career goal is to create compelling original stories that have a global appeal. Reunification is a historical thriller – a fictionalized story inspired by the extraordinary lives of his Korean grandparents. It is Pachinko meets Homeland. Jimmy’s grandfather (Soo Young in the script) was an ambitious son of a pear farmer in rural Korea, and his grandmother (Hae-Ren) was the daughter of a wealthy family in Seoul where her father was an esteemed economics professor. They met at Yonsei University as the Korean War loomed in the near future. Together, they shared a goal of becoming professors in America despite facing tremendous obstacles, including the conscription of Soo Young’s brother and the abduction of Hae-Ren’s father at the start of the war.
Across this series, Soo Young is recruited by American intelligence and sent to the U.S. to become the first Korean admitted to a prestigious American business school while secretly serving as a CIA asset. Yet his true goal never changes: to reunite with his brother and heal a family torn apart by the birth of two Koreas. As the 38th parallel hardens into the DMZ, Soo Young abandons his own family in pursuit of that impossible dream. The story spans decades, following his marriage, American-born daughter, career as a political science professor championing democracy in South Korea, and the cost of the secrets he carries, culminating with the 1980 Gwangju Massacre of protesting students by the military dictator’s troops where Soo Young is dramatically rescued by the U.S. Military.
Jimmy receives his MFA from the American Film Institute (AFI) as a Screenwriting Fellow this year. He previously earned his BFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU’s Tisch School. Several of Jimmy’s recent scripts have been well-received, including a feature, Dead Eye Dong, which was recommended by The Black List to the Motion Picture Academy’s 2026 Nicholl Fellowships, and Korean Shooter (a short excerpted from Dead Eye Dong), which won the WeScreenplay Short Script Lab and LA Shorts Film Festival (with staged reading).
