My Hollywood System

Chapter 4:

Benjamin Charles was sitting in his office with a pile of papers in front of him. Just now, another actor under him decided to quit MCA without giving a proper reason.

All this pile of work with low output was making him depressed.

First of all, the people on top were in a mess for a long time now, failing to even stabilise the position. Secondly, their actors haven’t been making any real hits lately, making the shares of MCA drop.

Just last month, one of the actors, Kyle Myers, a promising young actor, starred in a romantic comedy that MCA was investing in. But it failed at the box office, not even breaking even.

Sigh!

Benjamin sighed for the nth time after thinking about all this.

Shaking his head, he thought about the next appointment he has today and remembered that his late best friend’s son, Will, was coming to meet him today.

Thinking of him, another sigh leaked from his mouth.

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He was a nice boy with proper etiquette, just his self-esteem didn’t allow him to take money from Benjamin as help.

Since he wasn’t taking monetary help, Benjamin offered to introduce him to a film crew. So that he can at least work and earn a decent amount, while he gets experience and can one day finally be able to become a director.

But surprisingly, that kid declined his help and even asked to read his script and buy it if he liked the script.

Benjamin didn’t have any idea that Will had an interest in writing screenplays since he always dreamt of becoming a director and directing his own movie.

So Will’s sudden declaration to sell his own screenplay that he wrote came as a surprise to Benjamin.

Still, Benjamin didn’t have any hopes for the script. Good screenwriters were always in demand, but that also meant that there were very few good screenwriters.

So it would be foolish to expect anything good out of a script written by a young dropout. He probably even rushed the plot and would have made a lot of rookie mistakes too.

Still, Benjamin was willing to check it out, after all Will was his dead friend’s son. The best he could do was to look after him.

As Benjamin was busy thinking about various things, he heard a knock on his door.

“Come in.”

He said while settling down on his chair. The door opened as Will walked in.

“Uncle Charles, it’s been a while.”

He said as he greeted Benjamin. With an average middle-aged American face and a potbelly, his uncle resembled most of the depressed middle-aged office workers.

“Will, how have you been? Got yourself a girl yet?”

Benjamin asked as he came forward to shake Will’s hand. His eyes moved a little towards the script in his other hand as Will took his seat.

“Haven’t found one yet and I’m not looking for one. It’s too soon for me to settle down.”

“That’s true. When I was your age, I was going from one girl to another. That was the best time of my life.”

Benjamin smiled as he and Will did a bit of small talk. But in his head, he was evaluating him as a faint curiosity of what type of script Will was going to show him sprouted.

After a while, he finally started the main topic.

“Look, Will, I can only give you 30 minutes. So, let’s start with your script quickly.”

“Sure.”

Will nodded his head and passed Benjamin the script.

Holding the thick document in his hand, Benjamin opened it and saw the name of the script that clearly intrigued him.

“[17 again]?”

“Yes, that’s the name of my story.” Will began giving a short introduction to the story. “The story is a romantic comedy in its core but there’s a soft touch of science fiction and fantasy. It focuses on Mike, a star basketball player who gave up his dreams to handle the responsibility of his pregnant girlfriend. But twenty years later, he’s going through a divorce and his life is falling apart. A chance encounter makes him 17 again and he now has another chance to go through high school.”

The plot of 17 again was inspired a lot by time travel movies but it was mostly a body regression plot.

As the makers wanted it to be light and not like the dark time travel movies, it mainly focused on love, relationships, regrets and the importance of family.

Will personally liked the movie a lot.

Although there was nothing too surprising in it and the plot was even predictable at times, there was a lot to enjoy.

That’s why it emerged as a box office hit and became one of the best commercial movies in the year it was released.

Listening to the brief explanation by Will, even Benjamin was impressed. Though he didn’t try to show it on his face.

He silently went over the script and the first few pages were enough to make him see the potential of it.

‘A time travel movie with teen drama. Perfect for the actors I’m handling.’

Just like any other Industry, Hollywood has its ‘trends’ and currently, time travel movies were selling way better than pancakes.

Just six months ago, a movie called [A leap in Time] made 500 million dollars at the box office and even got several nominations.

After that, many studios were trying to emulate it’s success and Benjamin was hearing a lot about new movies based on this concept that was going to release in the next one or two years.

Even he wanted to get his actors in a project like this cause it basically guaranteed a hit unless the story was too messed up or the actors weren’t well known.

Though, he has no luck.

After all, it was really hard to find a specific type of script in Hollywood and even if he found one, most of them can’t be made into a movie.

Just the revisions in them would take a long time.

But now, there was a good enough script in his hand and it had come from a chance encounter. Who would have known that Will was capable of writing something like this?

After reading the first 15 pages, Benjamin was convinced that it was not just another mediocre script.

That’s why taking a glance at Will, he put down the script from his hands and picked up the phone on his desk.

Then, he called his assistant.

“Cancel my appointments for the next two hours.”

Sitting in front of him, Will silently smiled.