Rise To Stardom-Chapter 253: A-Listers

In its opening week, [Fables & Legends] amassed $50 million domestically and roughly $95 million internationally, cumulating to a $145 million net profit in total.

That, was a crap ton of money for a movie’s opening week.

Contrary to expectations, despite being the unfortunate collateral victim of what was probably the biggest scandal of the year leading up to its release, the dark-fantasy epic of Martin O. Ronan’s work, at least to the general audience, was building up to be a box office success.

However, as Atlas’s executives received the report of the net profit, most soon felt themselves breaking out in a cold sweat.

They figured it was coming.

Yet…

"This… this can’t be right, right?" one of them, dressed from head to toe in sleek black suit, scratched the back of his head with a dangerous chuckle.

"At this rate, we might end up only making double the investment…" another executive, massaged his temple with a mix of trepidation and slight panic in his gaze as he re-read the report.

As if in tandem, everyone else in the meeting room, proceeded to also make their own remarks, each one increasingly direr than the last.

The general audience wasn’t aware, especially since they had a kept the information on a tight leash but, the budget that went into making the live action epic alone was roughly $450 million+.

This figure didn’t even account for the marketing budget, which exceeded $70 million+, nor the numerous additional costs— including administrative and travel expenses incurred during filming, as well as legal fees for copyright clearances and contract negotiations.

After all, given the film’s large-scale production, coordinating countless moving parts had been essential to bringing its ambitious vision to life.

All in all, the actual estimated amount Atlas had spent on [Fables & Legends], was a couple million dollars over $600 million, hence why the executives were literally panicking.

This was why, even if they made double their invested funds, they couldn’t consider the venture a success as by the time their investments were being returned, it wouldn’t even have been worth the one-year+ wait.

At the end of the day, everyone in the meeting room were businessmen to the core.

As a result, they more than anyone knew just how well they could’ve invested that money into something else to make a potentially better net gain during that same span of time, instead of hoping and waiting for triple or quadruple their returns on the movie.

In any case, as the executives kept complaining, whining and moaning, Lex, simply kept his expression neutral without saying a thing.

After all, he couldn’t be blamed for it all as they had all cumulatively arrived at the decision to milk [Fables & Legends] by splitting it into seven parts, coupled with last month’s ’incident’ that threw a wrench into the movie’s hype.

However, beneath his seemingly unperturbed façade was a feeling of utter loss and envying greed as his eyes glazed over another document in his hands, one he had gotten from one of his many webs of vast informants.

In it, was a detailed report of [Tech Wiz: Year One]’s opening week, the superhero movie, earning $90 million domestically and a whopping $135 million internationally.

That equated to $230 million! Just a couple million dollars short of the movie’s planned budget of $250 million dollars.

Considering Kyle and co., actually ended up tightly sticking to that budget, they were already on the path to earning double their investments!

That said, as the manipulative CEO kept reading through all the info in the document, he soon set it aside in annoyance, a bitter feeling welling up in his heart.

Unfortunately for him though, there was nothing he could do to get back at Kyle to make himself feel better as obviously, the young man, really wasn’t the cause of their misfortune.

Rather, it was a product of his executives and his own greed especially.

Due to this, Lex simply closed his eyes as he let out a light sigh of resignation, acceptance and defeat.

* * *

The earnings of the second week for the fantasy-epic and the superhero-movie, ended up widening the gap even further between the two movies.

[Fables & Legends], racked in a now cumulative $305 million whereas [Tech Wiz: Year One], casually hit the half-a-billion mark with a cumulative net gain of $505 million!

Granted New Year’s was coming and it practically meant that earnings would see a sharp decline due to adults and children alike resuming work and school respectively in the month of January, Dot Production’s marketing team of skilled analyst, already projected the movie to crack a billion.

And in the next three weeks that came after, it in fact did, the cumulative total settling at a maddening $1.05 billion.

That was insane for an independently produced superhero movie! So much that the Guinness Book of Records soon made the announcement a few days later.

[Tech Wiz: Year One] was a box office juggernaut.

There was no disputing that… especially in comparison with [Fables & Legends]’ current $685 million that had long taken a nosedive, practically after its second week in the cinemas.

The reason?

Well it was reflected in people’s opinions and thoughts as they practically buzzed about both movies enthusiastically on various social media apps, TweetTalk especially.

In fact, on a viral post from a now popular website account that tallied box office earnings, was a captioned post of both movies with pictures of their cumulative Box Office earnings so far stating;

BOX OFFICE JUGGERNAUTS!

_ _ _ _ _ _ _

[Tech Wiz: Year One] - - - - ($1,050,769,427)

[Fables & Legends] - - - - ($685,205,941)

_ _ _ _ _ _ _

-

Kratos’ Axe: Boy! Check out them statistics. [Tech Wiz: Year One]’s absolutely decimating [Fables & Legends].

Wiz Lord: As it should @Kratos’ Axe. Watched the fantasy epic a few days back and it just shoots itself in the foot just when the story was building up to a cresecendo. That’s where [Tech Wiz: Year One] has it beat by leaps and bounds.

HobbitonWifiSucks: Totally agree with comment upstairs. [Tech Wiz: Year One] slowly eases you into its plot and steadily builds up, only to take you on a wild ride midway till the very end! Heck even the post-credit scene left us with a shit ton of unending questions!

SharinganShenanigans: You have no idea how much that post credit scene did me dirty @HobbitonWifiSucks! Is Caitlyn dead? Is she alive? Was Malakai making a clone of her all along? Did she know about all the events in that went down between Malakai and her son? My questions, just keep piling dammit! I need a [Tech Wiz: Year Two], NOW!! (Bangs table!).

OnePunchTweet: Oy!! Commenter upstairs! Don’t be giving me indirect spoilers if you don’t want to get catapulted to the moon with a punch! I’m yet to watch the movie!

ShinyLikeGollum: [Fables & Legends] would’ve performed so much better if it wasn’t for that stupid ass padding they added midway to draw out the story with unnecessary scenes that weren’t even in the book.

Ariana_Banana: I know, right @ShinyLikeGollum?! Even Martin talked about in an interview that he’d told them he didn’t like the final cut but they didn’t listen.

SpongebobNoPants: I really don’t get what it is with Hollywood movie directors and producers thinking they can do a better job of re-writing the story than the de-facto authors! We need to wage war against this people fr fr.

ExpectoTweetronum: My goodness… a billion dollars plus?! And that’s only for a month and a week. You guys think [Tech Wiz: Year One] will crack $1.5 billion before it’s theatrical two month run ends?

WhySoSiriusTho: @ExpectoTweetronum; It should. It very much should.

- Enjoy new adventures at novelbuddy

Meanwhile, as all these was happening, the main cast of the superhero blockbuster had been going around doing promos for the final weeks of the movie’s theatrical run.

That was why, presently, Kyle, Xavier, Sharon and Clint found themselves on The Late Night Abraham Burton Show, all the way in London, England.

As the audience laughed once again, Xavier continued to explain to both them and charismatically welcoming host whom was finding the interactions between the cast genuinely entertaining;

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"So, we’d lost the opportunity to make [Stray Wolves] and we’re getting ready to go on our beach date—"

"Damage control beach date." Kyle, dressed in a three-piece navy-blue suit, casually tossed in with a gestured hand, his legs crossed and his smile mischievous.

Abraham sputtered on his wine and went into a fit of laughing coughs as Sharon, dressed in a sexy-red formal-evening gown, went over to pat his back while similarly laughing alongside Clint and the audience.

"I’ll have you all know, Cass threw a beach ball at this menace for insinuating the exact same thing that day." Zay, fitted in a well-tailored three-piece brown suit, deadpanned in response as he gestured to the audience and Abraham himself.

Another wave of laughter filled the room as the young star simply shrugged, the glints of playful mischief never leaving his sapphire irises.

"Anyway, Kyle arrives with his agent and assistant, right as we exited the doors and voila, here we are." the director concluded with a humorous tone and the audience whistled and cheered in response.

As Sharon went back to take her seat, the charismatic host now in a much better state, he soon asked the lady herself in his British accent;

"We’ve heard that the meme that popped up during the film’s production was all your doing. Any truth to that?"

"I take pride in admitting that it was." Sharon gave a smug expression, earning chuckles from both Abraham, her fellow stars and the audience.

"In fact…" the lady retrieved her phone from the glass table as she continued speaking;

"I have a full clip of the entire thing." she showed Abraham the video, to which the host, quickly yet politely gestured to the massive LED TV behind them, one that Sharon promptly shared the video to a few seconds after.

-

KYLE: Um, guys. Can someone, please let me down?

SHARON: On birthdays, we bash piñatas. And right now, you look like a pretty bashable one.

KYLE: Don’t make me come down there, young lady.

SHARON: Is that so?

-

As the stars themselves watched the short clip alongside Abraham and the audience in the room, they all couldn’t help but burst into another wave of hearty laughter as the lady pulled the lever to raise the young man even higher.

A few seconds later, the laughter had died down considerably, with Abraham, gesturing to Clint this time in curiosity;

"Clint, your portrayal of Malakai was absolutely brilliant! How does it feel to have shot to fame almost overnight?"

"Uh… overwhelming?" the middle-aged actor purposely let out a shaky breath of nervous awe.

The audience chuckled at that as all eyes in the room fell on him.

"But uh, hearing my daughter telling kids her age she’ll call Overclock on them if they ever bully her, has been quite the experience I must add." he played up the comedic timing so perfectly, everyone went into another fit of laughter.

And just like that, the talk show went on.

On the eve of it ending though, Abraham asked one last question, his choice of tone clearly interested as he directed it solely towards Kyle and Sharon;

"So, how does it feel to finally be A-listers?"

Sharon was the first to answer.

"I’ve been chasing it for so long, it feels like all the sacrifices I had to go through to get here, has finally paid off."

"In other terms, you could say I’m extremely happy." the lady concluded with a ravishing smile reminiscent of a flower in full-bloom.

To that, Abraham and the audience applauded, and so did her fellow actors in the room.

As for Kyle, he shifted slightly in his seat and remained silent for a few moments before finally speaking, his tone carrying a distinct note of genuine appreciation;

"I feel, privileged."

"I could never have gotten this far on my own so, more than anything else, I feel privileged." he repeated in conclusion with a sincere smile and an honest gaze in his sapphire irises.

Once again, it manifested.

Kyle’s authenticity and humility as a human, first and foremost.

People might consider him a star but the young man himself, never really did.

After all, at his core, he was just glad to be able to do the things he loved and make a successful career out of it.

Every other thing that came out of it to him, was purely a bonus.

This was something everyone in the room felt and before they knew it, host, fellow stars and the audience alike were already showering him with the loudest of applauds.

And with that, Abraham gave each individual star a hug and then rounded up the show for the night.