Zenith of Desire: The Hollywood Incubus

We require only 24 additional Power Stone donors, only 5 more reviews, and 600 more collections and newly added Discord 5 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

****

Once the production side was stable, the package moved to finance.

The production department could build the budget, but it could not authorize Meyers Pictures to spend the money. Finance had to determine how the picture fit into the studio’s available capital and whether the projected production cost was justified by the film’s expected commercial value.

The final greenlight budget would then go to senior management for approval.

Marvin had more influence over that decision than anyone else. He had written the screenplay, prepared the storyboard and knew exactly what he wanted the movie to become, but the production team still had to prove that his vision could be delivered for the proposed cost and schedule.

By then, the project file had grown considerably.

The screenplay and storyboard were accompanied by script breakdowns, preliminary shooting schedules, cast and crew estimates, location reports, production-design and costume breakdowns, equipment requirements, post-production estimates, insurance requirements, marketing projections, contingency calculations and successive budget revisions.

Every major change was dated and recorded.

Meyers Pictures had existed for barely a month, but the production system was already taking shape around its first two films.

*Let the Right One In* would be the first picture to actually go before the cameras. Its principal photography was being prepared for the coming months, while *Legally Blonde* remained further down the production schedule, with its own principal photography not expected to begin until June 2000.

The distinction mattered.

*Let the Right One In* was the film that would establish whether Meyers Pictures could actually take a screenplay from development through production and deliver a finished motion picture.

The production department had therefore gone back through the budget several times, looking for places where money could be saved without making the film look cheap.

The original estimate had been considerably higher.

It was now down to $4.5 million.

That figure covered the complete negative cost of the picture, from the cast, crew, to locations, and visual effects where required and a contingency reserve.

Marvin’s own compensation was one of the easiest places to reduce the cost.

As the principal actor, writer and one of the central creative forces behind the production, Marvin could have commanded substantial upfront fees. Instead, he structured his deal differently.

The screenplay and other intellectual property belonged to Zenith, but that didn’t prevent Marvin from negotiating his own compensation for the work he performed on the film. His contract called for just $1 for his performance, with the same symbolic fee applying to his work as the film’s composer, writer and assistant director. In return, he received a 20 percent first-dollar participation in the film’s adjusted gross receipts—his share beginning with the first dollar the picture earned after the agreed distribution fees and applicable taxes, rather than waiting for the film to reach profitability.

The arrangement was deliberately simple. Marvin wasn’t interested in pulling millions out of the production before the cameras even rolled. He could afford to wait for the movie to earn its money, and if it succeeded, his participation would reward him for the work he’d put into it.

It meant the production didn’t have to spend millions—on Marvin’s upfront fees. That money could remain in the budget, paying for everything else the picture actually needed.

For Marvin, the trade-off was obvious: $4 upfront for all four jobs, followed by 20 percent of the film’s defined gross receipts once the money started coming in.

The savings were substantial.

The female lead, who carried the second-largest principal role, was budgeted at $150,000, while the third lead was allocated $120,000.

The supporting cast was considerably less expensive, with most performers falling between union minimums and modest fees depending on the size of their roles and the number of shooting days required.

The same cost-conscious approach was already shaping the studio’s next production.

For *Legally Blonde*, however, the casting calculation was somewhat different. The picture was being developed on a larger scale than* Let the Right One In*, but Marvin still had no intention of letting a comedy built around a young, relatively untested cast turn into an unnecessarily expensive production.

Paris Hilton’s casting required particular consideration.

She was not yet being paid as an established movie star, and Meyers Pictures was taking a chance by placing her in one of the picture’s principal roles. At the same time, Marvin wanted enough money attached to the offer to make the commitment meaningful and to compensate her for carrying a demanding production.

The studio therefore budgeted $190,000 for Hilton, with the amount covering her agreed shooting period and the standard provisions attached to the role.

The number was substantial for an inexperienced young actress but nowhere near the salaries being commanded by established Hollywood stars. For Meyers Pictures, it was also a manageable investment in a performer Marvin believed could become far more valuable.

The rest of the cast was structured around the same principle: spend where the screen required it and avoid paying for names simply because they were recognizable.

That discipline carried through the rest of the production.

Production design was one of the first areas where the studio deliberately restrained costs. Rather than constructing elaborate sets whenever a practical location could provide the same result, the location department searched for properties that could be dressed to match the world of the story. Existing interiors were being modified where possible instead of rebuilt from scratch.

The same philosophy carried into wardrobe and props.

Costumes were being purchased, and altered rather than unnecessarily commissioned...

The production schedule was being built around the locations to minimize company moves.

Every day saved meant savings in crew payroll, equipment rentals, transportation, meals and location fees.

Post-production was being kept under control as well.

The picture would still receive a proper edit, sound work, score, mixing, color timing and final mastering, but Meyers Pictures wasn’t going to spend like a major studio simply because it had the financial ability to do so.

By the time the preliminary budget was locked, the entire production had been brought down to $10.5 million.

*LEGALLY BLONDE* — TOTAL PRODUCTION BUDGET: $10,500,000.

It was considerably below the previous timeline and the kind of budget a major studio could have assigned to a mainstream romantic comedy, but it wasn’t being treated as a cheap production. The money was being concentrated where audiences would actually see it: the cast, locations, wardrobe, production design and polished post-production.

The cameras, however, were still months away.

*Legally Blonde* was already moving through its own slow development and budgeting process, but principal photography was not scheduled to begin until May 2000.

*Let the Right One In* would go first.

That distinction mattered. The horror film was about to become Meyers Pictures’ first actual jump into production, while *Legally Blonde* remained the studio’s third major commitment waiting in the wings, following *Malèna* as the second of its smaller-budget productions. The larger projects—The Lord of the Rings and The Matrix—were still being prepared for the following summer, with a new slate of productions planned after that.

Its $10.5 million budget was already approved as a working production figure, but not a dollar of it needed to be spent on principal photography yet.

For now, the studio’s immediate concern was the $4.5 million sitting in front of it.

*LET THE RIGHT ONE IN* — TOTAL PRODUCTION BUDGET: $4,500,000.

It was the first real financial commitment Meyers Pictures was preparing to make as a film studio.

This cost for a new studio represented more than the cost of making a movie.

It was the first test of whether Meyers Pictures could turn Marvin’s ambitions into a functioning Hollywood production without spending like a company that had already existed for decades.

For Marvin, that was how devotion worked.

Not promises.

Results.

---

By its fourth week, *The Others* had crossed another milestone.

Its North American total pushed past $100 million, while the international rollout had become almost impossible to keep track of. Miramax had been opening the film market by market, and by now it was playing in more than thirty countries, from the United Kingdom, Italy and Spain to Japan, South Korea, and New Zealand. Japan and South Korea in particular had embraced the film with surprising enthusiasm, while strong openings across continental Europe had turned the picture into something far bigger than the American horror hit it had first appeared to be.

Overseas receipts had climbed rapidly alongside the domestic numbers, bringing *The Others* to roughly $175 million worldwide by the end of its fourth week.

And there was still plenty of the world left to conquer.

Miramax had yet to roll the film out fully across several important territories, with Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand and much of Eastern Europe still waiting for their openings. Even markets where the film had technically opened were only beginning their expansion, with additional cities and screens being added as demand grew.

At home, however, film showed no intention of surrendering the crown.

For a fourth consecutive weekend, The Others remained No. 1 at the North American box office. There was no new blockbuster large enough to dislodge it. The film had already outlasted the initial frenzy surrounding *The Blair Witch Project*, and what had once looked like a temporary horror phenomenon had become something much harder to explain.

Ordinarily, that would have been the moment for Hollywood to declare the new sensation over..

The competition was still there, of course. ”Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace* remained one of the year’s biggest theatrical forces, while *Tarzan*,* Big Daddy*, *Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me* and the other summer releases continued fighting for audiences. Yet week after week, *The Others* kept pulling people back into theaters.

It had already done what few horror films managed to do: survive beyond the opening-weekend frenzy, survive the second weekend, survive the third, and cross the $100-million domestic mark while still expanding internationally.

And internationally, Marvin was only getting started.

The industry had stopped waiting for the film to collapse.

Now they were watching to see where it would stop.

With roughly $175 million worldwide after four weeks, and major markets still waiting for their releases, projections that had once seemed ridiculous—$250 million, perhaps even $300 million worldwide—were beginning to look conservative.

Naturally, Harvey Weinstein had thrown an opulent party at a private Beverly Hills estate. Officially, it was a celebration of *The Others* and another chance for Miramax to remind Hollywood that awards season had already begun.

Unofficially, everyone knew why the party mattered.

The previous year’s Oscars still refused to die.

The victory of *Shakespeare in Love* over *Saving Private Ryan* had become one of those Hollywood arguments that no amount of time seemed capable of burying. *Saving Private Ryan* had been one of the most acclaimed war films in years, praised for its brutality, technical achievement, performances, and emotional weight. *The Thin Red Line* had its own devoted admirers and had been treated by critics as a work of serious artistic ambition.

*Elizabeth* had given the Academy another prestige contender, with Cate Blanchett’s performance becoming one of the year’s most discussed achievements.

But then there was *The Sixth Sense*.

The film hadn’t merely become a commercial success. It had become a phenomenon. It had earned more than $800 million worldwide, while critics had embraced it as far more than a conventional supernatural thriller. It had frightened audiences, moved them, and somehow managed to become one of the most widely discussed films of the year without sacrificing its reputation as serious filmmaking.

That made its defeat sting differently.

Had *Saving Private Ryan* won Best Picture, people would have understood it.

Had *The Sixth Sense* won, people would have understood that too.

Either outcome would have felt defensible.

Instead, the Academy had chosen *Shakespeare in Love*.

And Hollywood had spent the months since trying to explain why.

The arguments had escaped the studios long ago. They had moved into newspapers, magazines, television programs and, increasingly, onto the Internet. It was still primitive compared with what it would become, but it was already large enough to connect millions of people who would never have had the opportunity to argue with one another before. Message boards, fan sites, entertainment forums and early online publications had turned the Oscar debate into a conversation that simply refused to end.

People compared scenes. They compared reviews. They compared box-office records. They argued about performances, directors, screenplays and the campaigns behind each film. Some defended the Academy’s decision. Others accused it of being manipulated by money, connections and aggressive campaigning.

****

Join my Discord...

(Discord dot gg slash 2MfM9J7dBj)

Join my Patreon

GodofPleasure

(dot)com slash GodofPleasure