Zenith of Desire: The Hollywood Incubus

We require only 86 additional Power Stone donors, only 5 more reviews, and 100 more collections and newly added Discord 15 more members to unlock the next bonus Chapters.

Get those stones going boys and tomboys, we need to get those numbers up!

Join my Patreon

GodofPleasure

(dot)com/GodofPleasure

****

Paramount Pictures

Sherry Lansing’s Office

Morning sunlight filtered through the tall windows, washing over framed one-sheets from Titanic, Forrest Gump, Braveheart, and Saving Private Ryan. They weren’t decorations as much as reminders. Every poster represented a gamble that had paid off.

Behind the broad desk, Sherry Lansing lowered a fountain pen onto a stack of budget reports just as her assistant transferred the call.

Sherry Lansing, the charming strong woman who ran the studio with an iron fist, was on the phone, her expression tight.”Tommy.”

”Morning, Sherry.”

His voice carried its usual confidence, though she detected a hint of caution beneath it.

”I’ll keep this simple,” she said. ”Have you spoken to Marvin?” Lansing said, her voice smooth but carrying a dangerous edge.

A brief pause.

”Not yet.”

”You’ve been saying ’not yet’ for almost two weeks.”

”I know.” Tom Cruise’s voice crackled through the line, sounding uncharacteristically evasive. ”Okay, Sherry. Look, I can wait on this one. You know I’m incredibly busy with the upcoming release of *The Others*.”

Another pause.

”I don’t think I’m the right person to make this approach.”

Sherry arched an eyebrow. ”That’s a surprise. It isn’t about the distribution deal. I assumed as much.”

Tom let out a quiet breath. ”I’d rather not cash in that relationship over something Paramount can negotiate itself.”

Sherry smiled faintly.

There it was.

Not just fear.

Restraint.

Hollywood survived on relationships long before it survived on contracts.

Calling someone to congratulate them after a premiere cost nothing.

Calling to ask for a favor spent something far more valuable.

Tom Cruise understood that as well as anyone.

His production company still had years ahead of it. If Marvin truly became one of the industry’s defining creative voices, asking him for a business concession today might cost him an opportunity five years from now.

Actors thought about their next picture.

Producers thought about their next decade.

But she also knew Tom wasn’t protecting a favor. He was protecting his position.

Most outsiders believed movie stars competed for roles. They didn’t.

Not once they reached Tom Cruise’s level.

The real competition happened months earlier, inside conference rooms exactly like this one. Studios only had so many premium release dates.

Only so much production capital. Only so many executives willing to champion a project when budgets climbed past a hundred million dollars. Every year, Paramount decided where those resources went.

One summer tentpole receiving an extra twenty million in marketing usually meant another picture received twenty million less.

A massive production commitment to one producer meant another waited until the following fiscal year.

Everything was connected. Cruise understood those mechanics better than most actors because he wasn’t simply an actor anymore.

He was a producer.

Cruise/Wagner Productions didn’t merely ask Paramount for financing. It competed for it.

Every dollar committed to someone else’s slate was a dollar no longer available for his own.

Every executive meeting had limits. Every development calendar eventually became full. Every marketing department reached capacity.

Then priorities were chosen.

And Marvin Meyers had become the industry’s newest priority.

If Paramount secured him under an overall agreement, he wouldn’t arrive alone.

His scripts would come with directors. With actors eager to work with him. With producers assembling packages around his stories. The gravitational pull of a creator like that reshaped an entire studio slate.

Sherry frowned, leaning back in her plush chair. She tapped her manicured nails against the leather armrest. It seemed apparent that Cruise was suddenly, intensely reluctant to contact Marvin directly to ask for favors regarding business deals.

’Ha,’ Sherry thought, a smirk crossing her face. ’Is the biggest movie star on the planet actually afraid of this thirteen-year-old kid?’

..

Tom could already picture the conversations.

”Let’s hold that Cruise project until next summer.”

”Marvin’s film needs Stage 16.”

”Move another twenty million into Marvin’s marketing budget.”

”We need Sherry focused on closing Marvin before anything else.”

None of those decisions would be personal.

Studios rarely were. Resources simply flowed toward whatever promised the greatest return.

Tom had spent nearly two decades climbing to the point where Paramount built schedules around him.

He had no intention of helping create the person those schedules might one day revolve around instead.

That didn’t mean he disliked Marvin. Quite the opposite. He admired him. Which was precisely what made him dangerous. A once-in-a-generation writer didn’t just make successful films.

He changed how studios allocated power.

Marvin’s terrifying talent and his ability to manipulate the market had already been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. Any studio or production company wanting to sign him into an overall deal would have to pay an astronomically high price, surrendering massive backend points and creative control.

Tom probably deeply feared that if he burned his personal goodwill with Marvin on a distribution favor, the resources his Cruise/Wagner production company invested would be wasted, and he would lose the kid’s favor for future acting roles on both sides as Marvin will be available in Paramount.

”I figured you’d say that,” Sherry replied.

”You aren’t upset?”

”No.”

”You sound disappointed.”

”I sound like someone who now has to make the call herself.”

Tom laughed. ”...Fair enough. I’ll see you next week.”

”You buying lunch?”

”I’ll expense it.”

”That’s why you’re running the studio.”

The call ended.

Sherry gently replaced the receiver.

For several seconds, the office fell silent except for the distant hum of Los Angeles traffic drifting through the insulated glass.

She rose from her chair and walked toward the window overlooking the lot.

Word traveled strangely in Hollywood.

Nobody ever admitted to leaking information.

Yet somehow, everyone knew.

Harvey Weinstein’s little whisper campaign had done exactly what it was intended to do.

A vampire screenplay.

A comedy called *Legally Blonde*.

Neither project had officially reached the market, yet every major studio had heard enough to know Marvin wasn’t slowing down.

That changed the calculation. Writers rarely became the center of bidding wars. Directors did. Movie stars did.

A thirteen-year-old screenwriter wasn’t supposed to.

Marvin had rewritten the rules before anyone realized the game had changed.

Behind the scenes, another contest was unfolding.

Viacom wanted stronger quarterly results.

The company’s executives in New York cared about margins, market share, and shareholder confidence. Paramount’s creative prestige mattered, but only if it translated into revenue. Success bought freedom. A disappointing slate invited questions from people who had never stepped onto a soundstage.

Sherry had spent years protecting the studio’s autonomy. Every hit strengthened her position.

Every miss gave New York another excuse to interfere.

That made Marvin more than an exciting young talent.

He was leverage.

If Paramount became the studio associated with Hollywood’s most sought-after writer, it would strengthen Lansing’s hand every time budgets, release calendars, or production commitments were discussed with Viacom.

The value wasn’t limited to the films he wrote.

Talent attracted talent. Actors followed great scripts. Directors followed great writers. Producers followed profitable packages.

One acquisition could quietly reshape an entire development slate for years.

’It seems someone else will need to step in and make direct contact with Marvin to secure his new vampire film,’ Sherry decided.

As a successful businesswoman and a ruthless studio manager, Sherry Lansing was not sentimental. It was one thing if she personally liked Tom Cruise as an actor and a partner, but it was an entirely different matter if she didn’t take advantage of Marvin’s rise to power to pad Paramount’s quarterly earnings. Loyalty in Hollywood only extended as far as the box office receipts.

Sherry returned to her desk and opened Marvin’s file.

It was noticeably thicker than it had been a month ago.

Agency reports. Registration records. Market analysis. Rumors from producers.

Notes from executives who had somehow managed to cross paths with him.

She flipped another page before closing the folder.

”Get me Jonathan Dolgen.”

Her assistant appeared almost immediately.

”The studio president?”

”Yes.”

”And after that?”

Sherry looked once more at Marvin’s name.

”We’re done watching.”

”It’s time Paramount got involved.”

---

While columnists debated his love life and Wall Street tried to calculate what he was worth, the most influential people in Hollywood were gathered in conference rooms trying to answer a far simpler question.

What was Marvin Meyers going to do next?

Studios wanted to finance him.

Distributors wanted to partner with him.

Agencies wanted to represent him.

Everyone was trying to position themselves before he made his next move.

Marvin, meanwhile, couldn’t have cared less.

He was reading.

Only a few days earlier, fueled by equal parts determination and relief after learning Marvin had secured the rights from Miramax and opened negotiations with the Tolkien Estate, Peter Jackson had thrown himself back into work.

The result had arrived in Marvin’s inbox before sunrise.

*THE LORD OF THE RINGS*

First Draft

Marvin smiled despite himself.

”He’s impossible...”

Peter had worked with the urgency of a man terrified the opportunity might disappear if he slept.

’This guy is terrifyingly fast when he’s motivated,’ Marvin thought opening the encrypted attachment, Marvin downloaded the files and watched the progress bar crawl across the screen.

A moment later, the screenplay filled his monitor.

Peter hadn’t stopped at the typed draft.

Attached behind it were scanned pages from his notebooks—margin sketches, crossed-out dialogue, hastily drawn maps, production notes, coffee rings, fingerprints, and entire paragraphs rewritten in thick black ink.

Marvin chuckled.

”Damn it, Peter...” He scrolled through another page covered in handwritten notes. ”You even scanned the coffee stains.”

Marvin grumbled to the empty room, scrolling through the messy attachments. ”Are you afraid I’ll make unauthorized changes to the lore?”

His eyes landed on an especially chaotic page where arrows, circles, and annotations seemed to compete for space.

Shaking his head with an amused smile, he returned to the screenplay itself.

Despite everything Miramax had put Peter through, the foundation was remarkably strong.

Years of rewrites, endless studio notes, budget cuts, and arguments had forced the story through an unforgiving crucible. Harvey Weinstein had demanded entire storylines disappear, compressed characters together, and repeatedly insisted the films be reduced to a single feature.

Peter had fought every step of the way.

The scars of those battles were still visible in places, but so was the heart of the story.

Richard had once told Marvin that, during one particularly brutal round of revisions, Peter had phoned him well after midnight and spent nearly half an hour venting about the Moria sequence before finally blurting out that he’d rather abandon the project altogether than keep cutting pieces out of Tolkien to satisfy another budget meeting.

Peter had actually broken down crying while revising the Moria sequence, shouting into the receiver that Fat Weinstein wasn’t worth the emotional torture.

Richard had laughed while telling the story.

Peter hadn’t.

Marvin lowered his eyes to the first page.

The room fell silent.

His gaze swept across the screenplay with almost unnatural speed.

Words became scenes. Scenes became sequences. Dialogue, pacing, structure, character arcs, emotional beats, visual transitions—they arranged themselves almost instinctively inside his mind as his memory absorbed every page.

Time slipped by unnoticed.

Barely an hour later, the final page reached the bottom of the screen.

Marvin leaned back in his chair, interlaced his fingers behind his head, and stretched until several joints cracked in quick succession.

”...That was faster than I expected.”

He closed his eyes for a moment.

The entire screenplay already existed in his memory, almost as vividly as if he had watched the finished film which he had.

’No big problems,’ Marvin concluded silently. ’The script is mostly consistent with the narrative direction I know from the previous timeline’s trilogy. Peter’s vision is solid. A few minor pacing changes can be made during the actual filming to tighten the emotional beats, but the foundation is brilliant.’

He looked back at the first pages while writing his notes.

The Shire lingered just a little too long. Not enough to become dull—its warmth was essential—but a few scenes could be tightened without sacrificing the feeling of home. If the audience reached Bree ten or fifteen minutes earlier, the story would find its stride sooner while preserving everything that made leaving the Shire hurt.

He turned another page and made another note.

Aragorn’s journey was already there. It simply needed to breathe a little more evenly. A quiet moment here, a subtle decision there, nudging him forward until accepting the crown felt less like a final revelation and more like the inevitable destination of a man who had been walking toward it all along.

Boromir gave him pause.

His death would devastate audiences regardless. Marvin knew that firsthand.

****

Join my Discord...

(Discord dot gg slash 2MfM9J7dBj)

Join my Patreon

GodofPleasure

(dot)com slash GodofPleasure