Monday, July 3rd, 2023
7:13 a.m.
The blinds in Owen's apartment bedroom were partially open, letting in the soft morning light. Outside, the usual sounds of the city had already started drifting in: passing cars, doors shutting, distant voices, and the familiar movement of a new workweek beginning.
The room wasn't fully lit, but it wasn't dark either. The grayish glow of early morning had already taken over the space.
In the king-size bed, Owen was still asleep, lying on his back with his eyes closed and one arm loosely stretched to the side.
Next to him, Jenna was already awake. Sitting against the headboard, partially covered by the sheets, she held a book in her hands and read in complete silence.
Until Owen mumbled something in his sleep.
"Anya…"
Jenna's eyes immediately stopped moving across the page. Slowly, she turned her head toward him.
Owen was still completely asleep, utterly unaware of anything, and a few seconds later he murmured the same name again.
"Anya…"
Jenna frowned. Once she could ignore.
But twice?
She slowly closed the book, and before her boyfriend could say another woman's name a third time while peacefully sleeping beside her, she lifted the book and smacked him sharply on the forehead.
Not hard.
But definitely hard enough to wake him up.
Owen's eyes flew open and he jerked up slightly, still completely disoriented.
"What…?" he muttered, looking around without understanding anything.
Then he brought a hand to his forehead and finally looked at Jenna.
She was still holding the book, the murder weapon, while staring at him with a clearly unfriendly expression.
"Did you just hit me?" Owen asked, still half asleep.
"No, it was a ghost," Jenna replied with obvious sarcasm.
Owen stared at her for a few seconds before mumbling, "Very funny…"
Then he added accusingly, "What if it were the other way around? That'd be gender abuse or something."
Jenna immediately rolled her eyes. "Don't be dramatic. It was a soft hit," she replied. "Do you want me to lend you one of my skirts for work today?"
Owen couldn't help laughing a little. He leaned toward her and gave her a quick kiss, "Good morning, Mrs. Violent."
Jenna accepted the kiss, though without much enthusiasm. Her frown returned almost immediately, "Aren't you going to ask why you deserved that hit?"
"Oh, right…" Owen murmured, still processing reality. "I'm half asleep. What was my crime?"
Jenna set the book beside the bed and crossed her arms, "You said another woman's name. Twice," she replied, staring directly at him. "'Anya.' And I'm pretty sure you mean Anya Taylor-Joy."
Owen went silent for a few seconds. Honestly, he had not expected that to be the reason.
He tried to remember exactly what he had been dreaming about or what the hell had been happening inside his subconscious to make him say that in his sleep.
Anya Taylor-Joy had starred in Lights Out, and even though Owen hadn't acted in the film, he had been extremely involved in everything else: casting, production, writing, financing, and more.
So he knew her fairly well, and Anya had become surprisingly close with Sarah. Sarah talked about her constantly with complete admiration.
And Jenna, although she tried not to admit it too much, was a little jealous of that. Especially because she still struggled to build a truly close relationship with Sarah herself.
On top of that, Matt had also praised Anya endlessly, her acting talent, camera presence, and professionalism.
Owen kept trying to mentally reconstruct the dream while looking at Jenna.
The first thing he almost said was: Anya has a boyfriend. But then he remembered something.
In this reality, she didn't.
In his first life, he vaguely remembered rumors that by around 2022, Anya had been practically engaged to her partner.
But things were different here. She was still single. Probably because the changes in this reality had also altered parts of her career.
The Queen's Gambit had never existed here, for example. She was still known and respected, but her level of fame had never exploded in the same monstrous way it had in the other timeline.
Maybe that was exactly why she never met that guy.
Maybe she originally met him at some event connected to The Queen's Gambit.
Or at a gala, an awards party, another production, or some social circle she simply never ended up entering here.
The thought that this change might have prevented her from meeting what seemed like the love of her life made Owen feel a little bad. Almost guilty.
It didn't help that Jenna was meanwhile staring at him accusingly for mumbling "Anya" in his sleep.
"Two reasons why I probably said her name…" Owen finally said.
Jenna kept staring at him with her arms crossed.
"First, I was dreaming about Fantastic Fest."
Jenna immediately nodded without needing him to explain the connection any further.
Anya was the lead actress of Lights Out, and just a few days earlier Owen and Matt had officially decided that the film would aim to premiere at Fantastic Fest.
The festival was held annually in Austin and was considered the most important genre-film event in the United States: horror, science fiction, thrillers, and fantasy.
It didn't have the impossible prestige level of festivals like Cannes, Venice, or Sundance.
But getting in was still a major achievement within genre cinema. Especially for an original horror movie.
That year the festival would run from September 21st to the 28th, and the problem was the submission deadline, the point by which the finished film had to be sent so the festival organizers could watch it and decide whether to accept it or not.
Submissions had opened during April and May with the Early Bird window.
Now came the Regular Deadline between June and mid-July.
If you missed that period, there was one final chance: the Late Deadline toward the end of July and early August.
The issue was that the final cut of Lights Out theoretically wouldn't be finished until August 7th.
Literally right at the edge of the deadline.
That was why Matt had become obsessed with speeding up the edit and constantly putting in extra hours during post-production ever since they decided last week that this would be the target festival for the movie.
He didn't want to risk missing out simply because of timing.
Owen, meanwhile, was far less worried because he seriously doubted the festival would want to pass on the film.
Lights Out already arrived with far too much preexisting interest: the original short film had over fifty million views, Second Take Films had become a hot name within the industry, and on top of that, this was the new movie from the two guys who made Paranormal Activity, the most talked-about horror movie of the previous year.
"And the second reason: Anya made it to the second round of casting for San Junípero. She's one of the twenty actresses who sent self-tapes, and today I'm reviewing them with Kogonada," Owen replied. "My subconscious was probably thinking about that."
Kogonada was a highly respected Korean-American filmmaker within modern independent cinema.
He had earned enormous recognition for his contemplative and emotional style in films like Columbus and After Yang.
Now he was the director hired for San Junípero.
During the first phase of casting, they had received more than forty actresses interested in the role of Kelly.
From there, they narrowed the list down to twenty.
Those twenty actresses had been sent portions of the script so they could submit self-tapes.
Anya was among them.
"Mm… I see," Jenna said with a small nod. "I guess that makes sense."
Honestly, it didn't even seem that strange to her that Owen kept thinking about work, casting, and projects even while asleep.
At this point it was practically a disease.
The two of them started getting up to get ready.
While Owen finished buttoning his shirt, Jenna spoke again from the other side of the room.
"So, do you want Anya to be your co-star? So you can kiss her?"
Owen raised an eyebrow and glanced at her sideways, "Wouldn't be so bad," he replied with a grin that was far too obvious.
Clearly trying to annoy her.
Jenna immediately tried to elbow him, but Owen was already fully awake and managed to dodge her before quickly slipping out of the room, quietly laughing.
She followed after him.
"I'm joking," Owen finally said as they walked toward the kitchen. "I guess my subconscious associates her with work because acting with someone you already know is always more comfortable than working with a completely unknown actress."
With Anya, he already had clear references.
Matt, Sarah, and Owen himself had seen her working during rehearsals and while supervising Lights Out.
She was a good actress, calm, a great co-worker, and extremely committed during filming.
On the other hand, no matter how strong an unknown actress's résumé, casting tape, or recommendations might be, you never truly knew what working with that person for weeks would actually be like.
Whether they'd be difficult, problematic, or unbearable on set.
He had already learned that lesson with a certain supporting actress during The Spectacular Now.
Jenna couldn't really argue against that logic.
So she simply sighed while the two of them started preparing breakfast.
Already seated at the table eating something very simple, Owen couldn't help unlocking his phone and opening Twitter.
The first thing he saw was a familiar box office account.
@BoxOfficeTheory — 7:01 AM · Jul 3, 2023
Good Will Hunting explodes in its 4th week.
The film closed Sunday with:
$9.1M domestic
$10.4M international
Its 4th week totaled an impressive $87.2M worldwide, more than it earned during its first three weeks combined.
The full expansion to 2,220 theaters in the U.S. and openings in new international markets pushed the phenomenon even further.
Worldwide box office total: $170.8M
Budget: $13M
One of the biggest breakout phenomena of the year 👀
Owen couldn't help smiling slightly before continuing to scroll.
@DiscussingFilm — 7:05 AM · Jul 3, 2023
All films written and starring Owen Ashford have been massive box office successes:
• Paranormal Activity
$144M worldwide
($20K budget)
• The Spectacular Now
$68M worldwide
($4M budget)
• Good Will Hunting
$170M worldwide and rising
($13M budget)
Total:
$382M+ combined worldwide gross with only ~$17M in total budgets.
Owen Ashford is 21 years old.
'That's an interesting record…' Owen thought.
Though now the real question was how long he could maintain it.
Second Take Films' next release would be Lights Out. Owen wouldn't be acting in that movie. But he was still its financier, writer, and producer.
So it would still count toward his overall résumé.
Honestly, he already viewed the project as a success even before release.
For several reasons.
First: he genuinely felt that he and Matt had improved the script quite a bit compared to the original version from his first life.
The budget was still relatively low, six million dollars, and horror had historically been one of the most profitable genres in the entire industry.
Even more so with an October release during Halloween season.
On top of that, they had Anya as the lead actress.
Owen considered her a far superior actress to the lead he remembered from the original film in his other life.
Then there was the automatic marketing generated by anything associated with him, the viral short film with tens of millions of views, and the growing industry interest surrounding Second Take Films.
Because of all that, he believed Lights Out could absolutely match the $148 million worldwide gross the film had achieved in the other reality, and possibly surpass it.
Meanwhile, everything suggested that Good Will Hunting would also outperform the numbers from the other timeline.
In his first life, the film had finished with around $225 million worldwide.
Here, Neon's current projections were already talking about somewhere between $250 and $270 million globally.
And internal studio projections usually tended to be conservative.
'That's an absurd amount of money,' Owen thought while staring at the same tweet.
With a 60% post-theatrical agreement, a large portion of that would end up directly in his bank account.
If the movie reached, for example, $250 million worldwide, his share would land somewhere around $75 million before taxes.
After taxes it would obviously be less.
But it was still a ridiculous amount of money for a twenty-one-year-old.
And that didn't even include the film's later revenue streams, or the rest of the projects like Lights Out's box office and the eventual distribution sale of Black Mirror.
If everything kept going well, Owen would probably end the year with a net worth above one hundred million dollars.
With that kind of money, technically he could even attempt to finance a gigantic blockbuster entirely on his own, getting close to the level of the major studios.
Though of course risking that much money on a single film would be insanity.
He read another tweet, this time from Variety.
@Variety — 7:11 AM · Jul 3, 2023
Good Will Hunting is no longer viewed simply as a successful indie.
With $170.8M worldwide in only four weeks, the original drama written by and starring Owen Ashford has officially become one of the biggest cinematic phenomena of the year.
The film is now considered a serious awards-season contender, with growing conversations around:
• Best Picture
• Best Actor
• Best Supporting Actor
• Best Original Screenplay
All while continuing its international expansion.
Owen kept scrolling.
He was already moving past the box office numbers when he stopped at another tweet.
This time it was a fairly well-known film criticism account accompanied by a clip from the movie.
The video showed the scene between Will and Sean.
The famous one: "It's not your fault."
@CinemaThreads — Jun 29, 2023
Good Will Hunting looks like a movie about geniuses, but that's only the surface.
Underneath is a quiet and devastating story about trauma, self-sabotage, and the fear of truly being seen by another person.
The film doesn't rush Will's transformation or try to turn his pain into something inspirational too quickly.
That's exactly why the "It's not your fault" scene works so well.
There's no huge speech.
No exaggerated manipulation.
Not even sad music trying to tell you how to feel.
Just repetition, patience, and someone slowly breaking down after years of holding everything inside.
One of the few emotional collapses in modern cinema that actually feels honest instead of performative.
The clip beneath the tweet showed the exact moment where Bryan Cranston kept repeating over and over it's not your fault. Until Will finally broke.
Owen automatically opened the comments. The tweet already had over seven hundred thousand likes.
An absurdly high number for a serious film criticism post.
💬 Replies to the tweet:
@CinemaThreads (Author):
750k likes 🙌❤️ Thank you all.
@celestialfilms:
Now I understand why Owen won Best Actor at Cannes. I thought he'd be a better writer than actor and somehow he turned out to be both.
@tanizks_1:
Bryan Cranston deserves a nomination no matter what. Same with Owen. If they don't get nominated, the Oscars lose credibility.
@Axel.w:
The "It's not your fault" scene is going to become one of the most famous scenes in cinema history.
@depre.ssionbroken:
Image of Tony Stark looking severely depressed with text saying: Jarvis, more alcohol.
@6202.Liam:
Its peak!
@anabelle.hancock02:
I never imagined Hal could act like this! Thank you Owen for giving him this role!
@ryantoils:
I walked out of the theater and heard a 50-year-old man say "I need to call my son." Yeah… this movie hit hard.
@jasonyam:
My absolute fav film of all time (I watched it yesterday)
@bendwi:
Absolute Cinema! Martin Scorsese approves.
@flaybz:
Adult cinema came back and it was brought back by a 21-year-old kid. Weird lol
@talesBY:
What's the context of this scene?
@Will1991 (replying to @talesBY):
Watch the movie, bro.
@talesBY (replying to @Will1991):
Movie name
@Will1991 (replying to @talesBY):
…
@itsmartin254:
The fact he was not acting there make u fr understand the real pain.
@Philstorn2:
The dad WE all needed
@MaikaGZ:
It's kinda my fault, too.
@SteveHTW:
What if nobody says it, everyone blames you and you blame yourself and then you find this masterpiece… this is how mine went and I'm grateful I watched this… Thank you Owen for making a masterpiece like this
…
Owen kept reading comments for a few more seconds.
Many focused on his performance, Bryan's performance, how both of them deserved to go to the Oscars, the ridiculous box office numbers, and how the movie had "revived adult dramas," which Owen thought was a little exaggerated.
But the comment he liked most was the one from that guy Steve.
Because beyond awards, money, or reviews, reading that someone felt the movie had genuinely helped them, even just a little, gave him a satisfaction far deeper than anything else.
"Why are you smiling?" Jenna asked from across the table. "Are you looking at a picture of Anya?"
Owen let out a soft laugh, "Yeah, obviously. I have a secret folder full of screenshots."
Jenna narrowed her eyes while Owen showed her the phone, specifically the main tweet and that comment.
Jenna read it silently. Her expression immediately softened, and she smiled at him with obvious pride.
Then they kept talking while eating breakfast.
"What do you have this week? Besides everything I already know about," Jenna asked.
"I need to schedule an appointment with Rolls-Royce Motor Cars," Owen replied as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
Jenna froze for a second, "The ridiculously luxurious car company?"
Owen nodded calmly, "I decided I'm giving my dad one. You know, the fifteenth is his birthday."
Jenna stared at him while processing the sentence.
Because Owen had just said I want to buy my father a Rolls-Royce with exactly the same tone a normal person would use to say I'm buying him a shirt.
"I've been researching how the process works," Owen continued without noticing her expression. "The problem is that half the appeal of a Rolls-Royce is fully customizing it."
That was exactly the dilemma.
Because with Rolls-Royce, practically everything could be personalized: colors, interior, wood trim, stitching, even tiny absurdly specific details.
But that process took time.
You had to go to the dealership, choose configurations, approve designs, and then wait months for the car to be built exactly the way you ordered it.
Which meant he'd probably have to take his father to the appointment personally.
That ruined the surprise a little.
What Owen had really wanted was to simply show up on his father's birthday with the car already there.
If he did that instead, he'd have to buy one already in stock. Honestly, that felt like a waste when it came to a Rolls-Royce.
Especially when he had the option to design it exactly the way his father would want.
"Sometimes I forget how ridiculously rich you are," Jenna said before taking a sip from her cup.
Owen actually lived a fairly minimalistic lifestyle considering how much money he had.
He lived in a relatively normal apartment for someone with his net worth, paying somewhere between four and five thousand dollars a month, when he could easily have bought a massive mansion in the Hollywood Hills.
He didn't own a yacht, private jet, ridiculous car collections, or live an excessively flashy lifestyle.
He definitely spent money, obviously. But usually on isolated purchases: a watch, a car, or clothes.
Then he could go a very long time without spending heavily on personal things again.
His everyday lifestyle probably didn't even exceed ten thousand dollars a month.
At least outside expenses related to films and Second Take Films. Because there it was completely different.
When it came to movie projects, he spent money without even blinking.
More than twenty million dollars on his last three projects alone.
"Hey, he's turning fifty and he's always loved cars," Owen justified himself with a small shrug.
His father was an absolute car fanatic.
In fact, he was the one who had passed that obsession down both to the original Owen and to James.
He taught them how to drive. He took them to races. It was one of the biggest hobbies he shared with his sons.
Even so, although Edward earned somewhere between one and one and a half million dollars a year, enough to live extremely comfortably and easily be considered upper class, a fully customized Rolls-Royce was still an enormous expense.
Especially considering it could easily reach four hundred thousand dollars, or even five hundred thousand.
That was why he'd never owned one.
Jenna slowly nodded while processing all of that.
"And your whole family will be there, right?" she asked. "The relatives from England too."
"Yeah," Owen replied with a nod. "My grandparents, uncles, cousins… basically my entire dad's side."
With the surname Ashford, it wasn't exactly difficult to realize that his father's family had English roots.
The story of how Edward ended up being born and raised in the United States was relatively simple.
Owen's grandparents had emigrated from the United Kingdom to the United States sometime between the late fifties and early sixties.
At the time, England was still going through part of its postwar economic recovery, and job opportunities weren't exactly abundant.
Meanwhile, the United States was entering a major economic boom.
That was why they decided to move, and it was there that Edward was born.
Years later, once they had stabilized financially, Owen's grandparents returned to live in the homeland they missed so much.
But by then Edward had already built his life in America and decided to stay.
Besides, a large portion of the Ashford family had never left England in the first place: his grandparents' siblings, uncles, cousins, and nephews.
Because of that, Owen grew up fairly connected to both sides of the family.
The Ashfords were close-knit. Especially during important birthdays or major family gatherings.
Throughout his childhood, both Owen, Sarah, and James traveled to England many times during vacations to visit the rest of the family.
Ironically, that had left Owen with a pretty useful advantage as an actor.
If he wanted to, he could do a perfect British accent. He had spent far too many years listening to his English grandparents, uncles, and cousins speak not to absorb some of it.
Eventually they finished breakfast, and five minutes before eight in the morning, the two of them headed off to their respective jobs.
Owen drove Jenna to the Netflix studios in the BMW. Everything was relatively close by.
Before getting out of the car, Jenna suddenly seemed to remember something.
"You still need to decide about the Bruno role. It's already been a week since the meeting with Netflix."
"Oh… right, yeah," Owen replied with a perfectly neutral expression.
Jenna gave a small nod, leaned in to give him a quick kiss, and got out of the car. She didn't want to push too much.
She knew how many things Owen had going through his head simultaneously.
Casting for the new characters was only officially beginning, so there still wasn't any extreme urgency.
But Netflix definitely wanted to close the deal as soon as possible.
Especially because every week that passed, Owen's market value kept rising higher and higher thanks to the phenomenon Good Will Hunting had become.
Once Jenna entered the building, Owen started driving again toward Second Take Films, and the moment he was alone, he slowly let out a breath.
The truth was that the role of Bruno in Wednesday did absolutely nothing for him.
The meeting he had with Netflix hadn't even been particularly creative.
Most of the conversation revolved around availability, schedules, contracts, money, and potential shooting blocks.
Because honestly, the character was pretty empty.
Basic.
His dialogue was minimal.
Across the first four episodes, he barely had five real minutes of conversation if he was lucky.
And while Owen did find the idea of taking a relaxed supporting role appealing, having some fun, traveling to Europe, and getting paid an absurd amount of money for relatively few shooting days, he also didn't want to accept something that generated absolutely no artistic interest for him.
His CAA agent had already directly told him that the project probably wasn't the best move considering the point his career had reached.
That was fairly revealing considering the agent would receive ten percent of the deal if Owen signed.
A deal that would probably comfortably exceed six hundred thousand dollars.
Even so, without even listening to his agent, Owen had already made a decision.
He was going to reject the role.
The real problem was that he still didn't know how to tell Jenna.
She genuinely seemed excited about the idea of working together again and spending time in Europe during the filming of Wednesday instead of being separated for months.
He arrived at the offices with that thought lingering in his mind, turned off the engine, and pushed it aside to focus on today's work: casting.
And just like that, the days passed until Friday arrived.
Throughout the entire week, Owen practically dedicated himself to consuming hours and hours of casting material alongside both directors.
Though he was spending noticeably more time and attention on San Junípero.
The other episode, Shut Up and Dance, he was delegating much more heavily to Jeremy, although he still stayed informed about everything happening and remained involved in major decisions.
The casting process for Shut Up and Dance had been absolute insanity.
More than three thousand submissions through Backstage alone, plus dozens more sent in by major agencies.
Thankfully, they were already past that stage, and the week started with a list of approximately fifty candidates.
Five days later, by Friday, that list had been reduced to fifteen actors.
Jeremy already had three very clear favorites, and interestingly, two of those three had come directly from Backstage rather than major agencies.
The third did belong to a large agency.
Among the agency-represented actors who had made it this far were several fairly well-known names within young Hollywood: Jaeden Martell, Noah Jupe, Asa Butterfield, and Dylan Minnette, whom Owen indirectly knew through Jenna after Scream 5.
Owen's friends Gaten Matarazzo and Caleb McLaughlin were also still in the running.
Owen wasn't going to play favorites.
He could if he wanted to.
Realistically, all it would take was a single conversation and he'd probably influence the final decision.
But he had no interest in that.
He wanted Jeremy to choose the best actor for the role.
Of course, Owen constantly gave opinions and discussed scenes, tone, and emotional beats, but never in a way that tried to push Gaten or Caleb simply because they were his friends.
Both of them had made it this far entirely on their own merit.
As for Owen, he had two pretty clear favorites.
The first was Alex Lawther. Every time they watched his scenes, Owen felt exactly the same thing:
He was perfect for the character.
The ironic part was that Jeremy didn't fully understand why Owen seemed so certain about him.
Because what Jeremy didn't know was that Owen had already seen that episode in another reality and had already watched Alex perform that exact role brilliantly.
The other actor who had massively surprised both Owen and Jeremy was:
Joe Keery.
Yes. Steve Harrington from Stranger Things. Except here that show simply didn't exist.
What was funniest was that Joe hadn't even come through a major agency. He had come from Backstage.
Meeting him made Owen laugh internally quite a bit.
Little by little, it felt like he was running into half the Stranger Things cast within this alternate reality: Gaten, Caleb, Maya Hawke, and now Joe.
Though honestly, it wasn't even that strange.
Hollywood functioned like a fairly closed ecosystem where tons of people constantly crossed paths through castings, agencies, recommendations, and overlapping circles.
The other thing that had shocked Owen was how good Joe's audition actually was.
He hadn't expected it at all, and clearly Jeremy hadn't either. That was why he had made it so far in the process.
Even so, Owen could tell Jeremy still didn't view him as the definitive frontrunner.
Meanwhile, the casting process for San Junípero had been far more controlled and organized from the very beginning.
It was also considerably further along.
On Monday they officially began reviewing the self-tapes from the twenty actresses selected for the second stage.
Kogonada had an extremely specific vision for the episode. Something that actually increased efficiency.
The guy analyzed tiny details obsessively, and Owen liked that, even if it also made him an incredibly obsessive and intense director.
Over those five days, between meetings, screenings, and creative discussions, they managed to reduce the list of twenty actresses down to only six finalists.
The chosen actresses were:
-Cailee Spaeny
-Sadie Sink
-Maya Hawke
-Ayo Edebiri
-Sydney Sweeney
-Anya Taylor-Joy
The following week would be the final stage: In-person auditions, live readings, and chemistry reads with Owen.
That would ultimately determine who would play Kelly.
As for Shut Up and Dance, the process would probably take a little longer. They still needed to narrow those fifteen actors down to a single lead protagonist.
-------------------------------------------------
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Link: https://[email protected]/Nathe07