It didn't take long for Aiden to receive the contract for [Black Saints]. In fact, Granite Films contacted Wade the very next day as the former didn't wish to take any more chances.
They were even willing to pay him 100k dollars, 30k$ more than what he had gotten in his previous movie. It was because this time his role was much more prominent and the shooting would also go on for more than a month.
The pre-production of [Black Saints] would still be on-going for two more weeks and after that, they would fly to Chicago since that was where the shooting was going to take place.
Until then, he just needed to attend a read-through which was more or less a script reading session before the shooting for the cast to meet each other and go through their dialogues.
But before that, there was one more special event left.
[Shadows of War] was going to be released.
"Marketing! That's the only thing we need to focus on. War dramas don't get a high audience rate at the start but they get famous because of word of mouth. We need to keep that in mind!"
Franklin, the executive producer for [Shadows of War] shouted as he looked at his team. They were in the middle of the meeting right now, trying to come up with ways to increase the audience rate in the theatres for the movie.
For him, any movie was a success in this age due to the marketing. If there was no good marketing around the movie, it would fail no matter how good it was.
There were various examples of this. Sometimes, good marketing would even get a bad movie to work.
"We are marketing it a lot. But the public is more interested in [A day in the life of Jonathan] right now, it's a romantic comedy and the director has been making good rom-coms for a while. They are the safest bet, so at least in the first week, they would surely get more interest from the audience."
One of the PR employees said, looking at social media numbers. These stats reveal a lot about the audience's mindset and which movie they are more interested in.
"The lead actor, Charles Waller even seems to have gotten into an affair with the female lead, so there's a lot of noise because of that."
"That's just an old trick to fool people. It's been used for decades now. At most, it would have been a one night stand, not a true relationship."
The other employees talked, being used to most of the rumors going around in Hollywood.
"Yeah, also, our trailer got more than 8 million views and most of the comments are good. We just need good enough reviews from critics to top it off."
"I heard Night Hawk studios is buying out some critics."
A blonde haired employee said, attracting all the attention. Night Hawk was the studio who was releasing [A day in the life of Jonathan] on the same day as their movie.
"How do you know it?"
"My friend works there. It's just gossip apparently, so more or less a rumour."
The employee explained and Franklin smiled. If that was really true, then Night Hawk was not confident in the movie, completely opposite of Zero International.
Though, there was still scepticism in Zero International about the movie, so they had not allocated a lot for the noise marketing, this was why Franklin and his team needed to be smart with the budget in hand.
He himself had seen the final version of the movie after Lincoln and his team of editors had finished with it and had liked it a lot. That's where his confidence stemmed from.
"I think we should constantly release footage of the movie to keep the audience's interest intact." A female employee said but her words quickly got refuted.
"Like that, we could run out of content. We can't show everything for free. Otherwise, people will see the movie and say that there was nothing new."
"One more thing is that many just want to watch the movie on their streaming services. They don't mind waiting a month or two for it. Most movies appear on those after a while anyway."
Everyone in the room nodded. That was just the changing times of the movie industry as a whole due to the OTT market that had sprung up.
Many movies which had been a hit years ago were now turning out to be flops as people wanted to watch them in their home in comfort. A famous critic even said, "Any movie which can get people to leave their homes is a good movie in the current circumstances."
Even [Shadows of War] was already negotiating with a streaming service called Zetflix for the rights. If everything goes well, the movie will start streaming there in two or three months.
"I have an idea."
Suddenly, a bespectacled guy said, raising his arm.
"Speak!" Franklin gestured to him to open his mouth.
"If we are going towards word of mouth, we should have a lot of free screenings, not only for critics or celebs. But we could also get an online competition in which we give a whole family a chance to come to one of the previews. If the movie is good, which we know it is, then word of mouth would do the rest."
"That's a good idea."
Franklin nodded, truly happy with the idea. That would surely help out the movie. Thinking about something, he glanced at his assistant.
"What are the estimates for the first week?"
"Uh, around 16 million dollars. Going by the advanced booking, this much is the number but word of mouth will affect it a lot. We might expect a higher number or lower depending on it."
"Let's see how it goes."
***
3rd October, 2015
Chinese theatre, Los Angeles.
It was the day of the movie preview for the movie. Zero International had called a lot of movie critics from different newspapers and even some independent ones. Aside from that, a lot of B and C-list actors were given invitations along with some A-listers who were currently working with Zero International.
After all, an article saying that a certain famous actor attended the preview of a movie was good publicity.
"Who do you think we will see at the preview today?"
Outside the theatre where the preview was going to happen, a lot of reporters were gathered together, chitchatting. They were just low level reporters for different companies, some were even interns but were paid well for good enough photos.
"Aaron Hart, George Watts, Layne Connor, Lincoln Bradley… A lot of big names. I heard some actors with upcoming projects in Zero International and some singers will attend too."
At those words, a reporter who looked like a college dropout, asked.
"Will Christina Hadid come too? Ain't Aaron Hart and her having an affair?"
A reporter smoking a cigarette laughed at that, "Rookie, Aaron Hart is in an affair with a lot of women in Hollywood at the same time. Once, he was even caught having a quickie in a restaurant's bathroom with one of the waitresses. He had taken his wife to dinner that day."
As the rookie reporter looked shocked hearing that, another reporter chipped in.
"There were rumours that his wife spent 5 million dollars in the next month after that."
The reporters laughed at that. As ground reporters, they knew too many rumours in Hollywood. Some were true and some had just sprouted out of nowhere.
It was then, a limousine entered the premises and Aaron Hart came out of it with his wife, a former model. The reporters quickly started taking photos from a distance as the security guards stopped everyone from coming near him.
Aaron even posed with his wife who gave out a smile. No one could tell what their actual relationship was through these photos as they just seemed like a normal couple.
After that, more and more luxury cars, the same as many celebrities entered the theater. Aside from that, there were also many critics and some B and C-listers.
Even some social media influencers were called to the preview in an effort to get them to promote the movie through their followers.
The reporters felt like they were having a great day as a lot of photos were taken by them. The more photos, the more money they would get.
It was then that they saw a guy coming out of a taxi. He was wearing a nice suit with gelled hair. He even looked handsome but the reporters didn't know if they had seen him before.
"Does anyone know the guy?"
"He looks good. Maybe he's an actor that's in the movie."
"Why's he coming in a taxi? Even those social media Influencers came in nice cars."
"Trying to save money I guess. It's better than a showoff."
As the reporters discussed, the rookie reporter suddenly remembered where he had seen the guy before.
"He's a singer. Aiden Silverguy or something. I think one of his songs went viral a month or two ago and he even did a song with Grey. Went around doing lots of shows in LA. I heard he's doing pretty good in his indie career."
"Why is he here then?" A bearded reporter asked. "Zero International won't call an indie singer."
"Maybe he got an invite from somewhere. Anyway, it seems like he already has a bodyguard. Even looks scarier than other celebs bodyguards."
The rookie said, pointing to the bearded man besides Aiden who was whispering something to him. All the reporters nodded but they didn't seem to care about him and focused on other celebs.
It was only the rookie reporter who took some photos of Aiden.
It was only the next day when he felt like it was the best decision of his life as the photos of Aiden got him a lot of money from the news agencies.
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