My Hollywood System

Chapter 91:

If Jeffrey had asked the same question on the earth of Will’s previous life, he would have been able to gather quite a lot of weird gazes.

‘What do you even see in Marvel Comics?’

It was funny yet ironic to Will. It had broken all records of Hollywood, and Avengers: Endgame was something that had grossed the all-time 2nd ranked most earning movie at the box office. Only behind Avatar.

Just the brand value of MCU was something well above anything in Hollywood.

After spending some time in this world, Will was finally getting caught up in everything in this world. He had found out many of his previous life’s actors working in small movies; some were even famous, like Scarlett Johansson’s counterpart, Scarlett McJohn.

Franchises like Marvel and DC comics also existed in this world. But although Marvel was in existence and had a good fan base since the 1940s, it had been struggling against DC comics of this world after the 2000s. It had been pretty close before that, but in 2000, Marvel Comics decided to take a step forward and get a lead.

Marvel had co-ordinated with a medium-sized studio and made a superhero movie to make some extra profit and gain a lead from DC. They used one of their most famous superhero families and made [Fantastic Four: Marvel’s first family].

But the movie ended up failing, sending Marvel Comics into the very depths of despair.

It was pretty funny to Will that even in this world, a franchise like Fantastic Four was a failure in cinema.

Marvel suffered a lot of loss, causing DC to get ahead of Marvel and become the absolute ruler of Comics in this world. Currently, in 2011, most of Marvel’s market belonged to DC.

Marvel comics was now on the verge of bankruptcy, and only the history attached to it was helping it stay afloat.

On the other hand, DC had sold its movie rights to Allen Studios, one of the Big Six Studios.

Allen studios had created a series based on Superman back in 2003-2004, and it was even a hit amongst the audience, but it barely managed to make a break-even for Allen Studios because of all the money spent on its high-level production budget.

Just the VFX took a lot of money, and Allen felt like it wasn’t worth spending on it.

They still had all the movie-making rights of DC, apart from Batman, but they hadn’t tried to make another DC movie or series yet after its first one. Entirely due to the scope and earnings of the previous series.

Batman’s rights were with a mid-sized studio called Zin Studios. They had bought the rights way before Allen bought the whole DC rights, but they never were able to release the movie in cinemas.

In the end, the studio sold it directly to DVD, and a copy of it could still be bought. But the movie wasn’t able to make much profit.

On the other hand, Marvel had become something like an untouchable existence that the people in the movie industry didn’t want to try touching, just like [Detective Sherlock Holmes].

Everyone knew there was scope, but no one was willing to spend so much money on it. Hollywood was still in the romantic comedy and teen movies phase and hadn’t realised the potential of science fiction and superhero movies.

Ever since Will learnt about all this, he had told Jeffrey to go and buy off the whole Marvel Comics with all its employees and such. Not just the movie rights but the whole company, which would give Will more freedom to work with. Since DC’s rights were already sold, Will decided not to put his leg in that franchise yet.

In the future, maybe he will try to buy the rights. But for now, his hands were tight.

He had already told Jeffrey to get the Batman rights from Zin Studios, which seemed quite plausible as Zin studios was still a small studio and would want to get rid of the rights of a movie they wouldn’t be able to produce with their budget.

As long as Will acquired the company, he would have a lot of blockbuster movies in his pocket.

Most of this stuff was getting handled by Jeffrey and Will’s lawyer, Jason Grace so that the acquisition of Marvel company and Batman’s movie rights goes smoothly.

As this world’s marvel was currently going through hard times, the company’s current valuation was $14 million. Will had offered $20 million, which was a lot more than its current valuation, making all of the company shareholders agree to it and liquidate their shares, making the acquisition process pretty smooth.

As for the acquisition of rights for Batman, it was sold at $4 million. Although it was a considerable amount, it was worth it when Will knew the value of the Batman franchise alone. It included the Iconic ‘Joker’ after all.

With characters like Robin, Batgirl, Bane and Riddler, Will could just make a Batman franchise. Kind of like how Fox tried to create an X men franchise in his world.

Obviously, he won’t make the same mistake as them and ruin the franchise.

Will had big plans for his superhero ambition, and he won’t let any mistakes happen. If everything goes as planned, he will be one of the wealthiest people in the whole world.

***

Natalie Bergmann had gone through the first and second rounds of the audition and was currently in the DTA office waiting for her interview process.

When she had gotten the notice that she had passed the first round, she had leapt in joy. Then the second round happened and she managed to prove her acting skills again.

Now, only the interview was left to get into DTA.

If she passed the interview, she would be hired by DTA as a trainee actor and would then proceed to the third round, which will decide whether or not she gets a role in a movie immediately.

The third round was a special round to select a few extraordinary candidates who are good enough to debut in a movie directly. Others who normally passed the interview would be assigned an agent, and their agent would get them movies based on their capabilities.

This was proposed by Will, who was looking for two new faces to star in [1917] and some new actors for [500 days of summer].

Soon her number came for the interview round, and she was told to enter a room. The room was more like American Idol’s audition set, and the interviewers were seated in front with an ample space where Natalie was asked to stand. She had to remain standing throughout the interview and show her best self if she wanted to get selected.

The interviewers were all high ranking agents, and employees of DTA, one of them was Jennifer.

“Why don’t you have any success till now in this industry? What makes you different from the stars around your age that have made a name for themselves by now?”

One of the interviewers asked.

It was one of the most common interview questions in the acting field, and hence, Natalie replied easily.

“Luck. They had sufficient luck to get opportunities, and I didn’t.”

Everyone wrote down something on their notepad, and another interviewer asked a question.

“What would you do if you can’t get a good role even after joining DTA.”

“If I get a role, I won’t see if it’s good or not and will play it to the best of my capabilities. Efforts are recognised sooner or later.”

The others continued with their questions, and Natalie kept replying decisively to each of them.

In the end, Jennifer asked a question, too, as she was the highest-ranking employee amongst the interviewers.

“What’s one thing you won’t do for roles?.”

“Being a slut.”

Natalie answered without a hitch, and Jennifer just smiled. She personally liked her a lot. Her looks were on point and gave a nice feeling.

Moreover, her acting was pretty good, and she was proud. She had come here after lots of struggles, so ambition was obviously there too.

If only she got good roles, she could get a good career in Hollywood.

‘She might be one of those who might pass the third round and directly get a role.’

From what Jennifer knew, Will was currently planning to produce two movies. One would be a war movie with majorly only male characters, something that Natalie was obviously disqualified for.

For [1917], she already had 2-3 good male actors in mind. One of them was even so good that Jennifer had heard of him in the free market.

As for Natalie, Jennifer felt like the second movie would be quite nice. She had no information about it aside from knowing it was a romantic comedy.

‘She might be able to get a supporting role in that…’

She thought in her mind as the interview went on.