"Joe Keery," Jeremy replied.
'Seriously...?' Owen thought, falling silent for a few seconds.
"Owen?" Jeremy said when no response came.
Owen blinked and snapped back to reality. He was thinking that he was collecting Stranger Things actors the way Thanos collected the Infinity Stones.
And the funny thing was, it wasn't even something he was actively doing.
He hadn't made the decision to hire Joe, Sadie, or Caleb.
Only Gaten back when they made the short film, a decision he made together with Matt. The others he had left in the hands of the directors he hired.
"Joe Keery from Backstage, huh?" Owen asked, leaning back in his chair. "Surprising. On paper, I'd admit Alex Lawther or Dylan Minnette seemed like much more logical choices for such a dark thriller. Why him?"
If it had been entirely up to him, Owen would have chosen Alex.
The original protagonist from his first world. Although no one else here knew he had starred in the episode. He had that withdrawn, shy, and slightly unsettling appearance.
On the other hand, while he had seen Joe's auditions and thought he was a good actor, in fact, he had been surprised he made it that far in the process, he just didn't give him the vibe of the character.
Maybe because, unlike everyone else, Owen automatically associated Joe with Steve Harrington. The best character in Stranger Things.
Steve was a babysitter with a bat included.
That's why it was ironic to imagine him playing the protagonist of Shut Up and Dance.
Jeremy smiled when he noticed Owen's skepticism. He sat down in the chair across from the desk, crossing his legs with complete ease.
"I know what you're thinking, but Joe delivered an incredible final audition. He brought a vulnerability that none of the others managed to capture. Dylan was great, but his performance was too predictable: the typical good kid who seems scared. Alex gave it a very disturbing edge, but he came across as borderline psychopathic from the very first minute, which ruined the episode's final twist."
Owen listened attentively, curious about the explanation.
Jeremy leaned forward, gesturing with his hands to emphasize each point.
"Kenny, the protagonist, needs the audience to desperately empathize with him throughout the entire episode. We need to see an ordinary kid, just some random neighbor who's terrified because he's being blackmailed. Joe does exactly that. On top of that, he's a hidden talent. He has the acting range necessary to carry the weight of the entire episode on his own. It's incredible that he came through Backstage."
Owen weighed the arguments and thought they made sense. It was something he hadn't considered.
The protagonist had to be someone the audience could completely connect with.
Alex, on the other hand, had a more unsettling energy that created a sense of discomfort from the very beginning and could make the final twist feel more predictable.
Joe achieved exactly the opposite.
He would earn the audience's sympathy from the very first minute. The viewers would immediately take his side, suffering alongside him through every act of blackmail, and the final revelation would hit like a bucket of ice water, multiplying the episode's ethical and psychological impact.
"That's an excellent read," Owen nodded, finally agreeing.
Besides, he had literally earned the role through sheer effort. Going up against actors with agencies and far more experience.
Jeremy smiled slightly.
"Besides, the fact that he comes directly from Backstage and doesn't have such a defined public image helps," Owen murmured, more to himself than anyone else.
And since he wasn't an established actor, his salary would be considerably lower than the other options. But beyond the money, they were discovering and rescuing raw talent that the industry was simply ignoring.
They talked for a couple more minutes about Joe, finalizing his contract and discussing when rehearsals would begin. Then Jeremy left the office.
Once alone, Owen leaned toward his computer and immediately opened the digital files the casting team had compiled on Joe: his acting résumé, supplemented with some public information.
Born in 1992, he was 31 years old. Owen let his eyes drift over the education section. He had solid theatrical and institutional training, having graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in Acting from The Theatre School at DePaul University in Chicago, his hometown.
'Good training,' Owen thought.
That university degree guaranteed Keery an exceptionally strong technical foundation. However, in Hollywood, a diploma hanging on a wall guaranteed absolutely nothing, and the rest of his résumé was living proof of that.
His list of credits read like the roadmap of a stalled actor: a handful of independent theater productions, local television commercials in Chicago for fast-food brands like KFC and Domino's, and episodic appearances, barely one- or two-line roles, in shows filmed in the area such as Chicago Fire and Empire.
His current address was listed in Los Angeles. Owen assumed the guy must have moved there a few years ago in search of better opportunities in the geographic heart of the industry.
But he didn't seem to have had much luck.
At 31 years old, Joe was already carrying an age at which he could no longer realistically audition to play teenagers in coming-of-age dramas or high school romance/comedy films.
Hollywood usually cast actors in their twenties to play high school students, but stretching that gap to someone already past thirty was too much even for them.
On the other hand, for mature, substantial dramatic roles in studio films, the system preferred proven actors with stronger résumés. Not necessarily mainstream stars, but people with feature films or television series where their work could be seen more clearly.
Owen continued scanning the monitor, reading through the details of the casting report.
Suddenly, a piece of information he hadn't been aware of made him stop the cursor and raise an eyebrow in genuine surprise.
Under legal representation, it stated that Joe was signed with Gray Talent Group.
'But wasn't he supposed to have come directly from Backstage?' Owen thought, frowning in momentary confusion.
Given Keery's situation, the logical assumption was that he would, at most, be represented by an independent agent or some extremely small and peripheral boutique agency.
But Gray Talent Group wasn't just any name; it was one of the most prestigious, selective, and respected talent agencies in Chicago. They had successfully expanded their operation and now maintained active offices in both New York and Los Angeles.
Owen leaned back in his chair, analyzing the full picture. After a few minutes of mentally connecting the dots, he arrived at the logical conclusion.
Although Gray Talent Group was a giant in Chicago, it operated under a very different reality within the Los Angeles ecosystem: there, it played in a lower-middle-tier league.
On the West Coast, the agency's branch simply didn't have the political influence, industry connections, or financial muscle to get an unknown 31-year-old actor into closed auditions or major television pilots.
'He must be assigned to a junior agent or someone who barely pays him any attention,' Owen immediately deduced.
A representative who simply processed his paperwork automatically for fast-food commercials and submitted him to insignificant auditions for supporting roles on network television.
That was probably why Joe had been forced to actively seek out his own auditions through platforms like Backstage and eventually ended up here.
'He doesn't have it easy if that's the case,' Owen thought, letting out a soft sigh filled with professional empathy.
And deep down, he felt a small pang of guilt. It wasn't an unbearable burden, but rather a subtle sense of responsibility.
Since Owen had watched Stranger Things, and that show didn't exist here, he felt somewhat responsible for the fact that the series that had launched Joe to stardom didn't exist in this world.
Besides, he remembered another detail: Joe wasn't just an actor, he was also a talented musician.
He had financed his true passion, music, thanks to the stable and substantial income the Netflix series had provided.
But here, at 31 years old, it was highly likely that he had never even been able to seriously explore that side of himself. Most likely, he was barely getting by, juggling money month to month just to pay rent in a city as expensive as Los Angeles.
Owen stretched in his chair to loosen his back, stood up, and walked over to the coffee machine in his office.
As the aroma of coffee began to fill the room, he found himself thinking again about Joe's agent. He couldn't help but make a face.
The guy was probably about to get the surprise of his life when he found out that one of his forgotten clients, the one whose last name he probably couldn't even remember, had landed the lead role in the most talked-about indie studio project of the year.
That was the worst part of the Hollywood machine: the agent would collect his ten percent commission despite Joe having done absolutely all of the work.
Actors on Backstage have to pay for a membership in order to apply for auditions and jobs through the platform.
The only real advantage Joe got from having representation was the negotiation process.
An agent, no matter how junior or opportunistic, turned into an attack dog the moment they smelled money. He would handle the legal paperwork and make sure to secure the best deal possible for his client.
'By this point, he's probably already aware of it,' Owen thought, taking a sip from his coffee mug.
As Joe advanced through the casting process, the agent at Gray Talent Group should have already found out.
If by now the guy still didn't know that his neglected client was one step away from starring in the psychological thriller everyone was talking about, then he truly was the worst representative imaginable.
'His salary will be cheaper than Sadie's, but more expensive than Chelsea's,' Owen thought, doing the math in his head.
Chelsea was a USC student who hadn't even graduated yet and whose résumé consisted only of student short films. Even so, Owen had decided to pay her $25,000 for her participation.
If he had wanted to, given that Second Take Films held all the leverage and negotiating power, he could have paid her the SAG-AFTRA minimum, which for that type of production was around $4,000 per week.
The shoot for that particular episode lasted 16 days, meaning it didn't even complete three full weeks. Owen could easily have offered her a flat contract worth a total of $10,000, and she would have accepted without hesitation, happy to secure her first professional credit.
But Owen wasn't a cheap producer. As an actor, he knew how difficult it was to break into the industry, and he preferred to recognize her talent by increasing the figure to $25,000.
In Joe's case, the production logistics were very similar: the estimated shooting days were almost the same, totaling 18 days.
However, there was one important difference: Joe's university degree. A solid institutional education justified a higher starting rate than that of an amateur student, even if there was nothing else on his résumé that dramatically increased his market value.
With that in mind, the most likely scenario was that Gray Talent Group's junior agent would try to negotiate a flat salary somewhere between $20,000 and $30,000 for the entire filming block.
For an actor in Joe's situation, that kind of money for 18 days of work wasn't just a good deal, it was a financial lifeline.
However, Owen had other plans in mind. He intended to pay him between $40,000 and $45,000.
For Owen, it wasn't charity but a practical and personal philosophy.
He was an actor too, and he understood firsthand the enormous psychological difference between working with a noose around your neck because you have rent to pay and working with a completely worry-free mind.
He knew that an actor who was paid generously and genuinely valued stepped onto a set with a radically different attitude. Joe would work happier, more focused, and more committed.
Besides, Owen viewed things from a perspective that few people in corporate Hollywood shared. His bank account was already overflowing with millions of dollars, and it would only continue growing over the coming months. A difference of five or ten thousand dollars in a production budget didn't make the slightest dent in his finances.
Owen had never understood that pathological obsession many people had with compulsively accumulating money.
"Whatever," Owen muttered, pushing those thoughts aside and picking up the phone to call the lawyers. He wanted to get everything moving immediately so they could begin negotiations the next day and finalize the contract as soon as possible.
Once that matter was off his plate, his thoughts drifted to Stranger Things.
Without a doubt, it was a series he wanted to bring into this world. Sometimes he felt as though the universe itself was sending him signs by making him work with so many of the actors who, in his previous life, had starred in the show.
It also had the perfect format for streaming.
More importantly, it had the potential to become a massive phenomenon, with multiple revenue streams beyond viewership: merchandise, licensing deals, collectible figures, and who knew how many other things.
He had already spent a fair amount of time thinking about how much it would cost to produce the first season.
He hadn't created a serious or detailed budget. That required time he simply didn't have. But he estimated that each episode would cost somewhere between six and ten million dollars.
Eight episodes.
That meant a minimum of $48 million and a maximum of $80 million.
A large number, but not an impossible one for him.
The real problem was something else.
Owen had died in February 2022. He had watched the first three seasons of Stranger Things in full, but the fourth season was only a few months away from premiering when he died. He never got to see it.
Therefore, he didn't know how the story ended.
He didn't even know whether the Duffer Brothers had finished the series with a fourth season or whether they had eventually made a fifth, sixth, or even more.
However, he did have one major advantage. The first season worked extraordinarily well as an almost completely self-contained story.
In the end, Will was rescued. The mystery surrounding his disappearance was solved. The Demogorgon was defeated. The kids completed their adventure. Joyce got her son back. Hopper found answers. Even Steve ended up completing his unexpected redemption arc.
The only loose ends left were Eleven disappearing, Will coughing up that strange slug in the bathroom, and Hopper leaving food in the woods.
Small hooks for future stories, but nothing resembling a major cliffhanger.
In fact, Owen remembered that the Duffer Brothers originally didn't even know whether the series would be a success or receive additional seasons. That's why they had designed the first one as a story capable of standing on its own.
If the series performed as well in this world as it had in his, he would find a way to continue it.
First, he would have to get there, and if he ever reached the point where he ran out of material he could remember, then he would sit down with a team of top-tier writers and build his own ending.
That was a problem for the future.
'Maybe next year,' Owen thought as he drummed his fingers against the desk.
This year was already practically impossible.
As much as he could recall scripts in detail and had improved enormously as a producer since arriving in this world, he still had one unavoidable limitation: time.
In a single year, he could push through two or three major projects.
This year, he would complete a total of three: Good Will Hunting, Black Mirror, and Lights Out.
Two feature films and one series. Although he hadn't been equally involved in all of them.
On Good Will Hunting, he had participated in practically every major decision and starred as the lead. He had been working throughout the entire shoot.
Lights Out had been different. There, he delegated much more. He handled pre-production, supervised certain parts of post-production, and kept an eye on making sure everything moved in the right direction, but much of the day-to-day work had fallen to Matt and the rest of the team.
Not being on set allowed him to continue with his next projects.
Black Mirror fell somewhere in the middle, more involvement than Lights Out, but less than Good Will Hunting.
Stranger Things would be a different story. If he produced it, he wanted to play one of the main characters. Steve or Jonathan were the most obvious options.
That meant months of filming he would personally have to participate in. And it wouldn't be three episodes. It would be eight.
Black Mirror had begun development in April, and according to his calculations, it would be finished sometime between November and December.
In total, it had taken between eight and nine months of work since it began in April. And that was only for three episodes.
Although the comparison wasn't entirely fair. Black Mirror was an anthology.
Each episode was essentially an independent movie.
Each one required its own cast, director, and technical crew, in addition to new locations, costumes, and pre-production.
It was like producing three separate projects at the same time.
Stranger Things, on the other hand, was simpler in that regard.
Once the principal cast was finalized and the most important sets were built, the rest of the season moved forward as a single continuous production.
There was no need to reinvent the project with every episode. Even so, it was still an eight-episode series. It would probably take him 12 months at best to complete the first season.
Seeing that he had already finished everything important for the day, Owen remembered the short film Matt had recommended.
'The Chair...' he thought as he searched for it on YouTube.
He quickly found the channel.
That's a Bad Idea.
It was the right one. More than four hundred thousand subscribers. Not bad.
The video was titled: The Chair (Nominated for Best Short Film – Los Angeles Shorts International Film Festival. Directed by Curry Barker)
That immediately caught his attention.
It was a fairly common practice. Many short films and feature film trailers included in the title or description the major festivals where they had been selected, nominated, or awarded.
He had done it himself.
When he released the second trailer for Good Will Hunting after Cannes, he made sure to highlight that the film had won two awards at the most prestigious film festival in the world.
And while the general audience might not know it, the Los Angeles Shorts International Film Festival wasn't just any festival.
It was one of the oldest and most respected short film festivals in Los Angeles. Every year it screened hundreds of works and served as a genuine showcase for new talent, attracting both emerging filmmakers and industry executives, producers, and agents.
Being nominated for Best Short Film there was already a clear sign of quality and could even put you on the Academy's radar, potentially opening the door to the Oscars in the short film category.
It guaranteed nothing, of course. Many shorts passed through qualifying festivals without ever reaching the Oscars.
Owen pressed play.
Twenty-four minutes and twenty-two seconds.
He watched the entire thing without checking his phone or getting distracted.
When the credits finished rolling, he remained silent for a few seconds, staring at the screen.
'It's good,' he thought.
The first thing that became obvious was the lack of budget. Not because it looked bad.
Quite the opposite.
Precisely because it was clear they had compensated for every financial limitation with creativity.
If he had to guess, he would say the budget was comparable to that of a well-executed student short film. Perhaps somewhere between five hundred and fifteen hundred dollars.
But Barker understood his limitations perfectly.
He wasn't trying to compete with productions that had expensive visual effects or large-scale sets.
Instead, he leaned into contained psychological horror, demonstrating a complete understanding of how pacing, framing, and sound design could replace much of what was normally achieved through money.
The directing was surprisingly solid.
The cinematography wasn't spectacular, but it was highly effective.
However, what truly elevated the short film was the sound. It built tension extremely well.
It didn't try to scare the audience with cheap jump scares.
The performances were also better than he had expected. There were no extraordinary performances, but they were solid and believable.
The actors managed to convey disbelief, tension, and genuine fear without falling into the overacting that ruined so many independent horror shorts.
So either they were genuinely competent actors, or under Barker's direction they had delivered the best performances of their careers.
Taken as a whole, the final result clearly placed it in a category above most of the short films circulating on YouTube.
Matt had been right.
The director had talent.
Out of professional curiosity, he searched for more videos on the channel, expecting to find additional short films in a similar style, but he had no luck. Instead, he ran into an endless wall of short comedy sketches, quick videos ranging from one to three minutes.
Owen clicked on a couple of them at random.
They were funny, he wouldn't deny that.
However, after the second video, he closed the tab and leaned back in his chair, interlocking his hands behind his head as he stared at the ceiling.
Now a reasonable doubt had entered his mind.
Owen was searching for talent. That was precisely why Matt regularly sent him links to shorts he found interesting, looking for promising filmmakers or directors who were completely unknown to the industry's radar.
The initial idea Owen had in mind was simple: he wanted to hire a new, unknown director to helm an official short film under the Second Take Films banner.
It had been quite a while since he had released a short film. Owen had many scripts gathering dust in his mind. He wanted to keep the channel active and continue feeding its millions of subscribers with more than just vlogs or trailers.
The problem lay in the execution.
Owen couldn't always delegate those projects to Matt, since he was focused on larger productions.
So he needed to hire a new director.
Second Take Films was his flagship brand. Every short film they had uploaded had gone viral, earning unanimous praise from critics, enthusiasm from general audiences, and major awards such as Sundance and even the Oscars themselves.
That was precisely why Owen couldn't afford to be careless.
He couldn't hire a new director only for the project to turn into a disaster simply because he was trying to discover talent. These productions, as independent as they might be, would still operate with minimum budgets of ten thousand dollars.
As a result, contacting Barker and hiring him based on a single serious work would be a considerable risk.
Across the entire channel, the only true short film, with genuine cinematic ambitions and a formally constructed suspense narrative, was The Chair.
Everything else consisted primarily of comedy sketches.
'But it's way too good to be his first short film,' Owen thought, giving Barker credit for that.
A creator who spent most of his time making comedy sketches had released his first horror short and managed to surpass two million views, generate highly positive feedback, and earn a nomination at the Los Angeles Shorts International Film Festival.
It could be viewed as either a risk or an opportunity.
Besides, the idea of hiring a YouTube content creator appealed to him. After all, that was where he himself had started.
'Good. I'll contact him,' Owen thought.
The decision was made.
Not to offer him a job. Not to hand him a script. And certainly not to promise him a directing position. Not yet. First, he wanted to meet him.
An exploratory conversation, provided Baker was interested in having one, of course.
The following day, two important events took place.
The first was Joe's signing. His contract was finalized for forty-five thousand dollars, officially completing the group of the most important actors for the Black Mirror episodes.
With that, the principal cast was practically locked in.
Rehearsals would begin on Monday of the following week.
The second event arrived around ten in the morning, when the first trailer for Lights Out was released.
The video appeared on YouTube under the title:
LIGHTS OUT | Official Teaser Trailer | Second Take Films
Although the final cut of the film was not yet finished, they already had enough edited footage to build a solid first trailer.
The teaser lasted only one minute and thirty-four seconds.
The strategy was simple.
Release this first teaser now to begin generating buzz, or rather, to increase the buzz that already existed.
Then, once the film was finished, accepted into Fantastic Fest, and distribution had been secured, they would release the main trailer.
The results on YouTube were excellent. The teaser accumulated eight and a half million views during its first six hours.
'Good numbers,' Owen thought.
He was sitting at the table in his apartment, reviewing the statistics on his phone.
It was five-thirty in the afternoon. Tonight, he and Jenna were going to have dinner at his parents' house.
The following day, July 15th, would be his father's birthday.
His mother had organized an intimate dinner to celebrate it. Nothing extravagant. Just the closest circle.
The two of them would be there, along with James, Emily, James's wife, and Sarah.
The idea was to spend the evening together and stay until midnight to officially welcome Edward's birthday.
The real celebration would come a day later, on Saturday night.
By then, there would be a much larger gathering. Relatives traveling in from England.
Friends of Edward and Elizabeth, business associates, and longtime acquaintances.
A guest list that had already surpassed one hundred people.
After all, turning fifty wasn't something that happened every day.
That was why Elizabeth had wanted to organize something more personal before the chaos of the larger event.
Owen glanced at the time again.
Jenna was still getting ready, and based on the experience he had accumulated over the past few months, he knew exactly what that meant.
He had a long wait ahead of him.
A very long one.
Owen sighed and continued scrolling through his phone.
...
A/N: For those who don't know him, Curry Barker is the director and writer of Obsession, a horror film made on a budget of just $750,000 that has already grossed over $400 million worldwide.