The Best Movie Actor In Hollywood!

Chapter 333

Knock, knock, knock!

A rap on the car window jolted Holker from his doze. He woke instantly, peering out to see his partner standing beside the car with a cup of coffee.

He hastily lowered the window, took the paper coffee cup from his partner, popped the lid, and took a sip. "Have Horner and Charlize left the hotel yet?" he asked.

The man by the car shook his head. "No."

Holker opened the car door and stepped out, glancing around. It looked like quite a few of his colleagues had been keeping watch through the night.

The sun was up, and he squinted against the harsh light, his eyes fixed on the hotel entrance. People were trickling out one by one, but the two familiar figures were nowhere to be seen.

"This is bullshit..." Holker grumbled, shaking his head in exasperation. "Horner is up there screwing an Oscar winner in a luxury suite, and we're stuck out here freezing all night."

The gap in their quality of life was just too damn big.

"There they are!"

It was unclear who shouted it, but the moment Holker saw the two familiar figures emerge from the hotel entrance, he dropped his coffee cup, snatched the camera from around his neck, and sprinted closer. Within seconds, he found the perfect angle, raised the camera, aimed the lens at Matthew and Charlize as they stepped outside, and started snapping away furiously.The camera captured a radiant Charlize and a buoyant Matthew, who had clearly had a very good night.

They had been photographed entering the hotel together, and now, leaving arm in arm—all the proof needed that they had shared a room after the Oscars.

These pictures had to be worth a couple thousand dollars. After all, this was Matthew and Charlize.

...

In front of the hotel, they got into a car together.

"Where are you headed?" Charlize asked politely.

Matthew leaned forward and told the driver, "The Angel Agency in Burbank."

The driver started the car, and as Charlize raised the side window, Matthew asked, "Why don't you wait for me at the agency for a bit? I just need to pick up a few things, and then we can go back to my place together."

Charlize said coolly, "Didn't you get enough last night? I'm tired and I want to go to my own bed."

As the car sped away from the Hollywood district, Matthew changed the subject. Though he was thoroughly captivated by Charlize, he hadn't forgotten about business. "Don't forget," he said, "we're going house-hunting in a few days."

This was all part of the plan, so Charlize didn't object. She just asked, "Didn't you invest most of your money in stocks? Do you even have enough left to buy a house?"

Matthew didn't actually have much cash on hand, but he had a solution. "The Pirates of the Caribbean sequel starts shooting soon, mid-April at the latest," he explained. "Disney will pay out my first salary installment then."

Charlize thought for a moment, then said, "Sure. I'll check my schedule when I get back and let you know when I have time."

"Perfect." Matthew added, "Just so you know, the areas I'm considering are Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, and Malibu."

"Anywhere is fine." Charlize was indifferent. "You're the one buying the house."

Matthew countered, "But you're the future lady of the house."

Charlize didn't deny it. Soon, the car pulled up in front of the Angel Agency. As Matthew got out, she didn't immediately tell the driver to go on, her gaze following his tall figure toward the small building, a flicker of doubt and complexity in her eyes.

She raised a hand to her face. Was she really going to be Matthew's girlfriend? For real?

Charlize gestured to the driver, who started the car and pulled away. She watched Matthew disappear into the small building and decided it was best to take things one step at a time.

Anyway, she'd never considered marriage, but...

...

Inside the Angel Agency, Helen wasn't around. Matthew greeted her assistant and retrieved the script for the new Mercedes-Benz commercial, which had just been delivered, from the file room.

Once Michael Bay was confirmed as the director, and with the shoot scheduled at Disney Studios in Los Angeles, he had become deeply involved in the planning. He'd met with the Mercedes-Benz advertising director, completely scrapped the old script, and drafted a new one himself.

The previous script had been several pages long, but the new one Matthew now held was a paltry single page with barely any text, making it impossible to decipher what Michael Bay had in mind.

He figured Bay wouldn't finalize the commercial's content until the actual day of the shoot, and that this script was just a last-minute formality to give him, the actor, a rough idea.

Some directors prefer not to over-explain a scene, letting their actors interpret the script on their own. Others prefer to communicate their vision precisely and have the actors perform exactly as they've been instructed.

As far as Matthew knew, Michael Bay belonged to the latter category.

Leaving the agency, Matthew grabbed a few newspapers. As expected, his and Charlize's grand entrance on the Oscar red carpet, officially announcing their relationship, had dominated the pages. The celebrity gossip tabloids, in particular, had plastered a photo of their passionate kiss in the interview area right across the front page.

Back home, he went online and saw that the news of him and Charlize heading to a hotel room after the Oscars was already all over the internet.

...

He'd managed to create quite a stir.

And the hype didn't stop there.

A week later, TMZ broke the story that Matthew and Charlize were looking at houses together in Beverly Hills, planning to buy a mansion for their shared "love nest."

Another newspaper then claimed they might even get married after the North American release of their film, Mr. & Mrs. Smith.

Given that the rumors about Matthew and Charlize had spread like wildfire last year, rivaling the buzz around Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, their co-starring role in Mr. & Mrs. Smith had already garnered significant attention from fans.

In a post-Oscars ranking of the summer's most anticipated blockbusters, one website placed Mr. & Mrs. Smith third, just behind Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith and Spielberg's War of the Worlds, and ahead of other favorites like the Batman reboot and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Of course, promotional marketing was crucial for Mr. & Mrs. Smith to do well at the box office, but the movie also had to deliver on quality. Otherwise, it would surely sink in the crowded summer season, where big commercial films were released nearly every weekend.

The $100 million film was originally slated for distribution by 20th Century Fox, who wanted to release it in the first half of May. However, with Fox also releasing Kingdom of Heaven in early May and Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith in mid-May, they couldn't possibly allocate sufficient resources for its overseas release.

Late last year, with Helen brokering the deal, Summit Entertainment and Akiva Goldsman signed a distribution agreement with Universal Pictures for Mr. & Mrs. Smith in North America and overseas.

The North American release for Mr. & Mrs. Smith was scheduled for May 13—an ideal weekend slot, since there were no stronger films opening at the same time. The only other movie opening with a reasonably wide release was Danny the Dog.

Written and produced by Luc Besson, the film starred Eastern action star Jet Li and had a production budget of $45 million.

However, Summit Entertainment and Universal Pictures clearly didn't consider Danny the Dog to be serious competition.

In fact, films written and directed by Luc Besson had never been box office successes in the North American market, and none of them had ever been major hits.

The weekend before, 20th Century Fox's Kingdom of Heaven, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Orlando Bloom, would open on schedule; the weekend after, George Lucas's Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith would deliver the Skywalker family's swan song.

Matthew had initially wanted to see if the release could be pushed to Memorial Day weekend. He wasn't particularly concerned about the film opening then, The Longest Yard, and figured it couldn't have been a major hit if he had no memory of it.

But that attempt ended in failure. He was just an actor, albeit the lead, and since he hadn't invested in or produced the film, he had no say in its release date.

Of course, Goldsman had explained that going up against an Adam Sandler football movie on the same weekend was ten times riskier than competing with a film like Danny the Dog.

With so many weekends already crowded with big commercial hits, it was wiser to pick the softest target.

There were less competitive weekends in July, but Universal and Summit Entertainment would never push the release of Mr. & Mrs. Smith back that far. Gossip has a shelf life, and even if Matthew and Charlize stirred up another scandal in July, it wouldn't have the same impact as it would in May while the story was still hot.

The entire publicity plan was built around a specific timeline; it couldn't be stretched out over such a long period, or it would certainly damage the promotional campaign.

The strategy from Universal Pictures and Summit Entertainment was clear: use intensive advertising and hype to generate as much enthusiasm and attention as possible from the stars' fanbases and the general audience, ensuring most people would buy tickets in the opening week.

Just as Matthew was focusing on this, National Treasure completed its North American theatrical run.