Spotlight · written by Josh Singer & Tom McCarthy · 2015

Mike and Robby arrive to find the Spotlight office flooded with victims calling in response to the story, and both quietly pick up phones to answer them.

Scene 143 of 143 · ≈ 4 min on screen · Last scene of act three

Save the Cat: Final Image
Matt
Mike
Robby

Act two

Begins 2:15 into a 2:19 film

The story so farBefore scene 143

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 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
Robby and Mike hustle down the hallway toward the growing murmur of ringing phones and voices coming from Spotlight.
Scene 143

143INT. GLOBE, SPOTLIGHT OFFICE - CONTINUOUS

Chaos. Sacha and Matt and two INTERNS answering phones. Overwhelmed. An intern cups a phone, turns to Matt --

INTERN

I got another Shanley victim. SACHA I’ll take it. (to Robby) The phones have been ringing all morning.

Sacha takes the call. Nearby, Matt’s on the phone, marking up the board... it has tons of new names, phone numbers.

MATTY (INTO THE PHONE) SACHA (INTO THE PHONE) Uh huh, yeah. I know it’s This is Sacha Pfeiffer. Yes, tough to talk about. thank you for calling. Who am I speaking with?

Mike and Robby stare. Matt spots them.

MATT (INTO PHONE)

Hold one minute please.

(to Mike)

Mike, could you grab that?

Mike moves for his desk, grabs the phone.

MATT (CONT’D)

They’re almost all victims, Robby.

This lands on Robby. A beat. Then he moves to his desk. Passing Mike, already picking up a phone...

MIKE (INTO PHONE)

This is Spotlight.

Robby moves to his desk. He watches the team answering phones, working. A beat. Then he grabs a phone.

ROBBY (INTO PHONE)

Spotlight.

FADE TO BLACK.

A CARD APPEARS.

Over the course of 2002, the Spotlight team published close to 600 stories about the scandal.

The card fades. ANOTHER CARD APPEARS.

249 priests and brothers were publicly accused of sexual abuse within the Boston Archdiocese.

The number of survivors in Boston is estimated to be well over 1,000.

The card fades. ANOTHER CARD APPEARS.

In December 2002, Cardinal Law resigned from the