My Hollywood System

Chapter 84:
Santa Monica is a beachfront city in California, and it is approximately 15 miles away from Los Angeles. Will had already rented out the building after talking to the owner and got all six floors of the building for the rate of $2.25 per square foot per month after negotiation.

Will rented the whole building for a year, and the total amount came to $9 million, including the maintenance cost. Will had checked other real estate and found out that it cost him really low as no one was going below $31 per square foot annually. To Will, it had only cost him $27 per square foot annually, which was quite the deal.

As Amanda handled the renting process, they were currently in the middle of moving Dream Vision Studios to this new building.

Will had tasked Jeffrey with buying new and top-end equipment as there was minimal equipment in the existing Dream Vision Studios.

Amanda had gotten busy with hiring new staff as there was a lack of staff after kicking out almost 15 people, and they needed more staff than ever when they wanted to expand the company now.

As all this was going on and everyone was busy doing their parts, Will had gotten busy writing down the first Harry Potter book. As he had the whole series in his inventory, he had decided to write down every book slowly and publish one book at the gap of half a year and then another one after another half a year.

But it was taking time to write down everything as Will was changing a lot of things in the book. By a lot, he meant a LOT. He had basically changed ‘Harry Potter’ the protagonist of the book. Although he was the same character, his situation was changed a lot from the actual book.

He still had the mysterious past of the Potter family, but he wasn’t a naive 10-year-old bullied his whole life and was still pure and naive. He had been changed into a cunning yet caring character, which gave a different feel altogether.

Will had even changed Hogwarts itself. The whole Hogwarts was turned into something that was like a modern academy structured and run over by magic science. Although most of the story plot still remained the same, most of the character settings had been changed or at least tweaked a little.

Some would say that he was changing the whole point of the legendary masterpiece, but that masterpiece never existed in this world, so it was Will’s fan fiction that would come out as the actual Harry Potter of this world. Not to mention that it was not the 2000s but the 2010s; the reader base is different.

His plan was to keep releasing a book every half a year, and when its popularity reached its peak, he would start the production of the first movie, hopefully much better than the original due to the time gap and technological advancements.

Will decided to give a more profound character to Ron and made sure that his character or dialogues won’t get stolen by Hermione, like in the originals where his character was pretty good in the books, but they changed it in the movie where all his dialogues were played by Hermione, making him look like a dumb bloke.

Dumbledore’s character was revised again, and Will was confused as to what to make out of him. Dumbledore came off as a character who was incredibly nice for an old man but wasn’t nice enough to decide where he would sacrifice everyone just for Harry. In the end, Will decided to leave Dumbledore as it is and decided to leave hints in the story that Dumbledore wasn’t as simple as he made himself out to be.

As Will finished his first draft of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, he re-read it to find any errors.

“What are you doing so early in the morning?”

Will felt something squishy rub his back as two soft arms hugged him from behind. The owner of the voice was June, who had woken up and seen that Will was busy on his laptop.

Will smiled as he turned back slightly and kissed June lightly on her lips, after which June cooed and snuggled into his embrace. She was wearing white-coloured a lacy nightgown and looked quite the feast for Will’s eyes.

“What do you think?”

Will asked with a smirk, to which June raised an eyebrow as she had rarely seen Will being smug about something.

“Are you writing another script for some movie?”

June asked curiously.

“Close, but Nah. I’m writing a children’s book.”

Will replied, to which June made a shocked expression.

“Are you kidding? There must be a catch.”

June asked after seeing that the smugness still hadn’t left his face.

“Well, it’s not exactly a children’s book, I guess? It’s suitable for all age groups, but yeah, mostly would target young teens, and it’s a teenage fantasy after all.”

Will’s reply again stunned June. She was confused as to why Will was an author when his popularity was already reaching a new height just because of his directing.

“Why are you writing a children’s book? You do know that writing a novel and writing a script are two totally different things, right?”

“I know that. I have had the idea for this book for a while now, and don’t worry, writing a children’s book would positively impact my reputation as long as it is good.”

“You sound pretty confident that your book would be ‘good’, eh?”

June said teasingly, and Will just closed the laptop and threw her on the bed as he pinned her hands with his and looked deeply into her eyes.

“What do you think? Is my confidence bad?”

June felt a shiver run down her spine, looking at Will’s dark black eyes as she said.

“No, it’s something that I find sexy.”

She bit her lips seductively after saying that as if inviting him to come and eat her.

Will let go of her hands, stood up and cleared his throat.

“Well, last night’s session was enough. We both have our share of work to do and have busy days ahead of us.”

June just pouted at that, and Will laughed. After a while, he printed out 2-3 drafts of the book and gave one to June.

“Read and tell me how it is. I’ll go shower till then.”

After that, Will went to shower. After freshening up, he came out with a towel tied to his waist.

“So… How is it?”

Will asked while blowing his hair with a hairdryer.

“I have read the first chapter, and the start is at least interesting. Yet again, I’ve discovered another layer of my onion. How much more are you hiding in that brain of yours?”

Will just chuckled at June’s pouty remark and started dressing up.

“By the way, do you have a publisher in mind for this?”

June asked as she, too, was preparing to go for a bath.

“I won’t be hard with my current reputation. I’ll take Amanda’s help to introduce me to some publishers. And even if it doesn’t work with them, there is always the option of self-publishing.”

“No, no, don’t do self-publishing. It will cost a lot if you do that, which would be a waste of money.”

Will just shook his head as he replied.

“I won’t be wasting money if I eventually earn more money from the book.”

June just stared at him for a while, thinking where he gets his confidence from, after which she just smiled bitterly and kissed him on the cheek before entering the bathroom.

Will knew where she was coming from, but he also knew what Harry Potter was in his world. Even if some people call it a lucky fluke for JK Rowlings, it was still a great book.

To be honest, it was one of the best-planned book series. JK Rowling had the whole story planned before she sat down to write the series. For example, in the first novel, there was a scene where Snape would ask Harry some questions during his class.

Years later, many people had found out that his questions had a hidden note in them.

It was pretty shocking to Will when he found this out, but this is just one thing that makes the movies so good.

Since this world didn’t have many masterpieces in the literature and Hollywood industry, he was confident that the book and movie would earn almost the same as the original world, unless there was a factor he forgot to take into account.

Moreover, if his plan worked, he was sure that he would have yet another series that would cross 1 billion dollars at the box office. Just thinking about so much money was enough to make him feel like his efforts were worth it.

Sometimes, he feels like he’s being greedy, but the truth is that human society was formed around money, and the only way to reach the top was to have money.

‘I need to write scripts and go through the audition tapes for DTA too.’

Jeffery had already posted a notice that they were recruiting actors and actresses from all age groups, and more than 1500 resumes had come in the short span of 2-3 days through the online portal.

Thinking of his tough schedule, he sighed. But at this point, he was already a workaholic.

…

//DreamNote//

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