HWI 431

Hollywood What If Chapter 431

Kazir rarely saw Fremont and Brianna lately. The two were busy making their own movie.

Based on what he heard, Fremont and Brianna practiced so much because the genre they were stepping into was not their forte.

The time they spent on training was almost 24/7. They knew their weaknesses after all.

Fremont studied music and musicals while Brianna practiced singing and dancing. Thankfully, Brianna was a theater actress and she knew how to sing and dance. She just has to practice the dance steps and songs.

Salvatore pitched the project to Lionsgate after 20th Century Fox disagreed with the project. 20th Century Fox was the initial distributor/investor of La La Land but the deal didn't happen.

It was a good thing that Salvatore was a respected agent. He immediately found another studio to work with.

For clarification, the production crew who were working on La La Land was no longer Grey Pictures. Grey Pictures couldn't handle more than 3 projects per year.

So Kazir decided to sell the scripts to Fremont instead for $3 million. Then, Fremont and Paramount signed a contract and sold the copyrights to Paramount Pictures since Paramount would shoulder all of the financial burden.

Buying the copyrights was the usual formula in Hollywood, or else the studio wouldn't promote and distribute the movie.

Anyway, Kazir got his money, and he would also have scrap money once a year depending on the profits of La La Land. For someone like Kazir, a few thousand dollars was indeed scrap money.

La La Land would probably be released in November or December, depending on how Paramount Pictures set the schedule.

Even though La La Land was a script written by Kazir Grey, only a few studios were interested in getting the copyrights. After all, La La Land was a musical and everyone understood that the musical was not Kazir's forte.

If the movie was comedy and action, the studios might go crazy.

The only good thing was that Fremont Smith was the director and Brianna Evans was the leading lady. Together with Kazir as the scriptwriter, La La Land had a stroke lineup and a strong box office appeal.

As for why La La Land was set up to be released in November or December, they wanted to premiere the movie at American Film Institute, in Los Angeles.

One of the requirements for getting nominated for the Academy Awards was:

1) The film must have won a qualifying film festival award.

OR

2) The film must have completed a weeklong theatrical run in a commercial theater of a qualifying metro area (LA County, New York City, the Bay Area, Chicago, Miami, or Atlanta).

Paramount wanted to do both so they decided to compete in the Film Festival...

Paramount Pictures would probably pay money to let La La Land win some awards.

The purpose of La La Land was to compete at the Academy Awards. But Paramount believed that the movie would also bring them profits.

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The advertisement for La La Land started showing up on the streets, Kazir even saw some posters of Ryan Gosling and Brianna Evans dancing.

"Not sure if they are going to win though. I know that La La Land is a strong card to use but the Academy Awards might vote for other movies. It depends on how Paramount will promote the movie to the old farts."

Kazir was a member of the AMPAS, so perhaps he was also part of these old farts. After all, his real age was more than 80 years old.

October just passed by and Kazir already started filming Batman Begins two weeks ago. The filming was going great, and next week they had to go to Iceland to film the winter scenes in Batman Begins. The scene where Bruce Wayne met the League of Shadows for the first time.

Since Kazir was single again, he didn't have a problem going to foreign countries. He also missed traveling the world.

While the plan to go to Iceland was confirmed, Kazir had to attend a meeting first before leaving the country.

The fate of Mr. And Mrs. Smith was smooth sailing. The movie didn't experience any bumps while riding at the box office.

After 31 days of screening, Mr. And Mrs. Smith won more than $276.16 million at the North American box office.

October doesn't have a strong lineup of movies except for some.

Shall We Dance? starring Richard Gere and Jennifer Lopez did well with $33.94 million when October ended. By the way, this movie was produced by Miramax. A subsidiary of Walt Disney.

Aside from that, The Incredibles was also released by Pixar, or to be precise, by Walt Disney.

The Incredibles was a well-known animated movie, and people loved it. It was not a surprise that the movie made $93 million after 7 days of screening.

Also, The Machinist, which was Christian Bale's movie where he was so thin was released in October... The movie didn't do well. Only $141 thousand in just two weeks. Christian Bale was ashamed to show himself on the set and stayed in his trailer most of the time.

The Machinist didn't have any box office appeal so it was obvious why it didn't make money. The genre and the plot were not meant for cinemas. The movie might make money in the DVD and rental markets, though.

If there was one movie that surprised everyone in October, it was probably Saw.

This small-budget movie created history. Even Kazir praised it in an interview.