Versatile Superstar: Rise In Hollywood

'Should I go for the movie or not?'

That was the question in the woman's head as she looked up at the trailer of [Disconnected] on her laptop screen. It had 23 million views and over 400k likes, and 7.7k comments.

Going by the trailer, the movie looked interesting, but she wasn't really sure. It had just been released today, and tickets were still available on the websites, so she was interested, especially with it being a weekend.

The only reason she was hesitant was that the last time she went to watch a movie, it hadn't turned out good. Sighing, she looked up to reviews, and they were mixed, with some saying that it was good and some just roasting it.

In the end, the woman had only one alternative.

'If there's nothing good to watch on Zetflix, I will book the ticket.'

She opened up Zetflix and looked through the list of recommended shows and series that were trending, but nothing really interested her. It was either a zombie, a generic rom-com or some other stuff like that.

Her Zetflix account apparently turned out to be useless, and she booked up a ticket at the nearest cinema hall.

On the weekend, she just wanted some good entertainment. Her friends were now mostly married, so she didn't have a lot of people to hang out with, so she chose to watch the movie alone.

When she reached the theatre hall, she saw that a lot of people were already present there and the crowd outside the screening of [Disconnected] was quite good.

Due to SGA and Black Line Cinema promoting the show a lot, many people had still come up. They were expecting a first-day estimate of around 12 million dollars and were hoping to go higher as the days went by.

Anywhere close to over 150-200 million dollars was a big profit for the studio, and they were expecting that the movie would achieve much more than that. Sixty million dollars was just the budget of the movie, and they additionally used 40 million dollars for marketing.

They needed it to hit 100 million dollars just to break even.

'It looks like the movie is getting a good amount of interest.'

The woman thought as she entered the cinema hall and sat down on her seat. The seats around her started feeling in slowly, and she could see that almost 80 percent of the seats were occupied.

It was a good sign that the movie would be good.

A lot of people had just come because they liked Jesse Ross's previous movies, and some were also curious due to Seth Douglas, as a lot of magazines had started labelling him as the next big thing.

At the same time, there were also fans of Aiden. There were a few scenes of his in the trailer, so his fans were quite excited to watch him on the big screen again.

A lot of people now think that Aiden was a capable actor after his last movie emerged as a sleeper hit.

He hadn't promoted the movie a lot, but they knew that he was in it, and it was enough of a reason to watch it.

'It's finally starting.'

She thought as the screen turned on and the opening credits started.

***

After the movie ended, the woman came out of the theatre hall with others. Her expression didn't look good as she was constantly frowning, wondering what she had just seen.

'That movie was bad.'

She felt like it was another case of a bad movie with a good trailer. Other people around her had the same expressions, and some were even looking angry.

All of them felt like they had wasted their time and money.

Next to a woman, a couple was talking about it.

"Why did you bring me to watch such a movie? I don't even know what was going on in the second half. What kind of a movie was that even?"

The guy in the relationship asked.

"I thought it would be good. You saw the trailer yourself."

"Yeah, but the movie was bad. It felt like the makers stopped being serious about it in the second half."

The woman also felt the same about it, actually. The first half was still average, but the plot was clearly lost in the second half. It was to the point that she felt like they were two completely different movies.

Somehow she felt cheated as the reviews promised that it would be a great experience.

'My money and time are already gone. The least I could do is to leave a review in retaliation.'

She thought and took out her phone. Opening up the website 'Do you like the movie', she left a review that was obviously not a good one.

<It's batshit. No character feels likeable, which is fine if the plot is good enough, but the execution is just poor. Scenes don't have a sequence, and they come just anytime. There's no order in it, and Seth Douglas fails as a lead. He's average, but the movie should have focused more on other side characters instead of making it a one-man show.>

She left a long review, and like her, a lot of other people also were leaving bad reviews. Unlike the critics, the audience had no hidden agenda, so they just left reviews without any bias.

Most of them were bad, and at the end of the day, the ratings for [Disconnected] were barely 5.1 out of 10.

***

On a movie entertainment website called Zenya, people were talking about the movies running in the theatres around this time of the year. Aside from [Disconnected], there was an action-adventure series called [Unguarded] that was running in the theatres.

Due to the high budget and good action scenes, it was at the top of the box office. Aside from that, there were only a few small-budget movies running in a small number of theatres.

The forum members talked about these movies, and one of them suddenly asked a question.

[Big Black Chicken: Anyone here watched [Disconnected]? It was released just today. I wanted to go check it out but don't know what to expect.]

To his question, there were a lot of replies.

[President Potato head: Go at your own risk. The movie could be contagious, and you might not come out alive, but life is all about risks, so you might as well take this one too.]

[Women over 25 are too old for me: I watched it, and it was something at the level of those paintings you admire in art galleries just to come out as mature and complex when the paintings don't make any sense.]

[Winning women of the year in my first year as a woman: Felt like they were trying too hard to show just anything. I mean, I'm pretty sure they have a vision with those cool-looking sets and great dialogues, but they don't help when the audience feels like they don't know the story anymore. Won't recommend it, to be honest.]

[Too many bad female superheroes: I heard that the occupancy rate in the theatres dropped to 60 percent in night shows from 80 percent in the afternoon shows. People these days are fast and check up a lot of reviews.]

[Cancel culture is intolerable: I watched it today. Went with a lot of expectations as I'm a fan of the director from his old movies, but it was not engaging enough. The story felt lacking, and they should have really edited it better. I would rather watch my cats fight for 2 hours than watch this movie.]

[Cat wars: Apparently, the director, Jesse Ross, had a fight with the studio, and he left a tweet too. It's still not deleted, so it feels like there's something clearly off, especially because the movie is turning out to be. Good drama for others though.]

[Edgy male lead: I don't think the movie is even going to recover its budget. I would be surprised if it didn't drop dead tomorrow. Response from the audience is very negative.]

It was clear only a very few had good thoughts about the movie. They were in the minority, and the movie clearly failed to create a connection with the audience.

On the first day of its release, it earned merely 8 million dollars which were lower than the estimates. SGA expected it to pick up the next day, but the numbers fell even down to 6.4 million dollars only.

On the third day, it somehow managed to reach only 5 million dollars.

The first three days of any movie are always very crucial as it decides the fate of the movie, and it looked like the fate of [Disconnected] was clearly sealed.

SGA did try to increase the marketing and try to get more people to the theatre, but they were not interested when there was a better alternative present.

[Unguarded] was something that was getting much more audience than [Disconnected] despite running in the theatres for a month already.

There was no doubt in anyone's mind that this movie had turned out to be a disaster.

Analysts had already predicted that the movie wouldn't even reach 50 million dollars and would emerge as a massive letdown of the year.

At the same time, it was also Aiden's first flop.

He had been very good with scripts till now, but this time, nothing had worked, and the movie turned out to be a dud.

...