The Best Movie Actor In Hollywood!

Chapter 452

The $18.5 million in advance ticket sales only confirmed Matthew's suspicions. With The Curse of the Black Pearl as a solid foundation and a targeted, massive promotional campaign from Disney Pictures, Dead Man's Chest was never going to be a box office problem. In fact, based on the presales and audience reactions, the studio had adjusted its projections, now estimating a North American opening weekend of around $150 million.

Matthew was thrilled by the news. It was exceedingly rare these days for a film to break the $100 million mark on its opening weekend in North America, and none of his previous films had ever reached that milestone.

"It's a sequel."

Helen stated the obvious in her office at the Angel Acting Agency. "It's incredibly difficult for an original film, one that isn't an adaptation or a sequel, to gross over a hundred million dollars."

Matthew completely agreed with her. "The last couple of years have been rough for original films."

Helen nodded. "So few original movies are commercial hits. And with the way the market is heading, studios have to spend tens of millions even on a modest production. That makes betting on an original film several times riskier."

While this wasn't ideal for the long-term health of the film industry, studios were commercial enterprises, not patrons of the arts. If it were his money on the line, Matthew knew he wouldn't invest in the riskier project either.

"That's just how it is." As an agent and a businesswoman, Helen had little room for the art of cinema in her calculations. "If you were presented with an original script and one based on a well-known property, which would you choose?"

The one he remembered being a massive hit, of course.

The reality was that when a star—or a studio—chose a project, the script was just one factor. The director and producer often had to be considered even before the screenplay.In American television, for instance, the script was king. The showrunner, who was usually a writer, held immense power; there had even been cases where a lead actor clashed with the writer, only to have their character unceremoniously written out of the show, forcing them to leave.

In filmmaking, however, the director and producer were far more important than the screenwriter, who often found themselves in a relatively precarious position.

Interestingly, the Producers Guild had contracts with all the major Hollywood unions that were set to expire around the same time. This meant that when the writers' agreement with the producers was up for renewal, so were the agreements for the actors and directors.

Every time these contracts expired, Hollywood entered a period of turmoil. The major unions would push for a larger share of the profits, but the Producers Guild, representing the money men, would inevitably refuse.

So, the unions would start planning to strike. But it was never the actors' or directors' unions that walked out, because management always showed just enough goodwill to keep them at the table before a strike could begin.

It was almost always the writers' unions that went on strike. Their demands were consistently dismissed by the studios, and negotiations would inevitably stall.

The screenwriters wanted deals comparable to what actors and directors received, which was plainly impossible. To the studios, they were simply far less important than the other two.

Matthew didn't know all the ins and outs of that world, but he knew that for big commercial films, a producer and a concept were often established first, and only then was a script commissioned. In the case of Mr. & Mrs. Smith, if it weren't for Akiva Goldsman, the lead producer, would Summit Entertainment have paid any attention to Simon Kinberg?

Matthew had read the screenplays for James Cameron's Titanic and Terminator 2 last year. Judging by the scripts alone, they were actually quite unremarkable. Terminator 2 was slightly better than Titanic in terms of plot, but that was it.

Screenwriters were always fighting for more power and status, but in modern Hollywood, their demands were often unrealistic. The industry didn't need writers to unleash their wildest ideas or come up with something mind-blowing.

Writers who wanted to break free of that system had to either invest in themselves or pack their bags and leave.

Still, the films that were truly embraced by audiences, the ones that sold well at the box office or had a strong awards season, almost always followed a typical three-act structure.

Hollywood was a world of business, and the market dictated the supply.

For the most part, the screenplays for major Hollywood films weren't the work of a single person. They were often the product of a collaborative effort, with several writers co-authoring the script, frequently followed by script doctors who polished the work. These polishers rarely received credit, and their names wouldn't appear in the film's end titles.

This assembly-line approach certainly had its flaws, but it also had its advantages.

For Pirates of the Caribbean, a large team of writers had been assembled. Some specialized in British dialogue, others in action sequences, a third group focused on the comedic moments, and yet another wrote about ships in the Caribbean, and so on.

Within a unified style and template, each writer contributed what they did best. It might not have been a very "artistic" process, but on screen, it at least looked the part.

This division of labor was particularly useful for specialized films—stories about rugby, medicine, counter-terrorism, or law—where it helped avoid painfully awkward, amateurish mistakes.

If a film failed to get even the most basic aspects of its subject matter right, its chances of success were predictable.

Of course, not all scripts were written this way.

There were also some writers who, when faced with depicting a professional situation they didn't understand, resorted to a lazy solution: they replaced professionalism with emotional drama.

You'd see it in certain films or TV shows. When a story was supposed to be a workplace or business drama, it would be edited in the style of a music video or a Michael Bay movie—a flurry of quick cuts to get through a scene in a minute, completely bypassing the need for actual substance.

As for the so-called workplace dramas and business battles, the writer had never experienced them and didn't understand them. So how could they possibly write convincing scenes or develop a detailed plot? As a result, all the audience ever saw in these "professional" films was a pointless love triangle.

When a person who knows nothing about a profession tries to write about it, how can they possibly fill the void in their words?

Matthew could imagine that Pirates could have easily been written that way.

****

After spending half the morning at the Angel Agency, Matthew left Helen's office just before noon. He had tasked her with contacting the agents for Depp and Knightley, intent on securing an even bigger payday for all of them on the next film.

Leaving the agency, Matthew ignored the paparazzi tailing him and drove straight to Amanda's apartment building in Westwood. Alexandra Daddario was waiting for him at the entrance, dressed in a form-fitting t-shirt and leggings.

She slipped into Matthew's car and asked, "Where are we going?"

"I booked a table at a restaurant with an ocean view in Santa Monica."

Alexandra nodded. "Let's go. I'm getting a little hungry."

The white Mercedes pulled away, followed by a car with his bodyguards, and behind them, the paparazzi in their own vehicles.