Spotlight · written by Josh Singer & Tom McCarthy · 2015

Robby and Mike hustle down the hallway toward the growing murmur of ringing phones and voices coming from Spotlight.

Scene 142 of 143 · ≈ 1 min on screen · Act three

Act two

Begins 2:15 into a 2:19 film

The story so farBefore scene 142

The Boston Globe's Spotlight team pries open the Catholic Church's decades-long cover-up of child abuse — one sealed record, one silenced victim at a time.

Scenes 4–10
Robby's Spotlight team operates comfortably inside its own routine, prospecting a modest police-corruption story under a departing editor's cover.
Scenes 11–14
Baron's outsider question exposes what the paper has never done: investigate whether Cardinal Law knowingly protected an abusive priest.
Scenes 15–24
The team sets aside its own project and enters unfamiliar territory: survivor networks, a hostile plaintiff's lawyer, and a legal fight to unseal church records.
Scenes 25–65
The team pays the cost of the work — hearing survivor testimony, chasing MacLeish's stonewalling, and combing church directories for a hidden pattern of reassigned priests.
Scenes 66–76
The directory search and Sipe's estimate deliver what they set out for: confirmation that the abuse spans dozens, then eighty-seven, priests across Boston.
Scenes 77–120
The cost comes due: 9/11 steals six weeks, Saviano accuses them of abandoning survivors, sources go quiet, and even finding Law's damning letters isn't enough to end the fight over when to publish.
Scenes 121–137
The team returns to its own newsroom and its own history, forced to admit the Globe buried MacLeish's 1993 tip and could have run this story years earlier.
Scene 138
The presses run overnight and the Sunday paper lands with the headline 'Church Allowed Abuse by Priest for Years.'
Just before
Scene 139
Sacha unlocks the Spotlight office before dawn and finds Matt, admitting neither of them has slept, as the tip line starts ringing with the first call.
Scene 140
In the empty Sunday parking lot, Mike and Robby arrive to a quiet, picketer-free entrance and walk in together like warriors returning home.
Scene 141
Mike and Robby find the main newsroom eerily quiet, until operator Linda tells them Marty sent extra staff down to Spotlight.
Scene 142
This scene

142INT. GLOBE, HALLWAY - CONTINUOUS

Robby and Mike charge from the stairwell. They quickly walk down the corridor with purpose. As they do, we hear...

A MURMUR. Buzzing. And RINGING PHONES. Mike and Robby trade a look, pick up the pace. As they approach Spotlight, the murmur GROWS. We hear more phones... and VOICES...

Mike and Robby get to the door. We HOLD ON them for a second as they stand in the doorway, looking into --