'There's your first problem. No Civil War movie ever made a dime. Or ever will.'

Hollywood, 1939: semi-independent mogul David O.Selznick has just shut down production on the most eagerly anticipated movie in history - his megabudget version of Margaret Mitchell's bestselling novel Gone with the Wind - scrapping the original script and sacking the director in the process.

Determined to produce a rewrite in five days, he engages the reluctant services of ace script doctor Ben Hecht - possibly the only person in America who has not read the novel - and the movie's new director Victor Fleming, poached straight from the set of The Wizard of Oz . His reputation on the line, and with nothing but a stockpile of peanuts and bananas to sustain them, Selznick locks himself in his office with his two collaborators, and a marathon creative session begins...