My Hollywood System

Chapter 51:

In the next few days, Will was pretty busy finishing the paperwork to acquire Krown studios. Things like this were always complicated in a place such as America.

One had to go through many departments to finish everything legally, but his lawyer, Jason, really helped him finish all this quickly.

On Sunday, he became the owner of Krown studios which was now renamed ‘Dream Vision Studios’.

Will had to spend a little in the office renovation, making a new website, and creating other social media platforms for his new venture. He wanted his studio to connect with people, and he very well knew how powerful social media could be.

Other than that, he also designed a logo himself.

He was not really that good at drawing, but he did his best for the logo of the company.

It was just a picture of a camera looking up in the distance with the studio’s name written under him. But Will liked it a lot.

In his mind, the camera was his way of visioning his dreams, and as it was simple too, it didn’t take much time to make it official.

As his identity as the new owner, everything surrounding him felt pretty new, almost like an employee’s first day of work.

But just because things felt new and fresh didn’t mean there wasn’t work to do. In fact, there was a lot of pending work, and it needed to be finished soon in order to enter the pre-production phase.

Although Will hadn’t fired a single employee, there were one or two of them who had left on their own accord, probably thinking that the company was going to die anyway, and the reason they stuck around was for Frank, not for Will.

There was already staff for most of the things, but everything was lacking, according to Will, so he wanted to hire more staff and fill in the gaps.

The CEO is the most crucial person necessary to run the company.

Will himself wanted to focus solely on movies. He had to do many things himself, like writing down the script, production and directing. He couldn’t just let anyone do the bigger negotiations for him either.

And with all this work on the side, it would not only be difficult to run the company, but there might also even be complexities, and these two works might become a thorn in amongst themselves. For these reasons, Will thought it would be much better to get a capable CEO, and he could just become the founder of the company.

As a CEO has the utmost power in a company and his decisions affect the whole company, he needs to be a person who understands the intricacy of Hollywood and must be capable enough to take decisions on behalf of the company.

For these obvious reasons, Will had already asked Benjamin to be his company’s CEO as he was the most capable person Will knew of, at least regarding these matters.

Benjamin immediately refused the offer, saying that he still had a lot of work in MCA, he even had a contract that he couldn’t break in the middle. Apart from that, he himself didn’t wish to start afresh, as it would be too tiring and take too much of his daily time, especially in the earlier days. So he said it would be better to find someone else.

As Will thought from Benjamin’s shoes, he, of course, understood his reasoning. Dream Vision was just a chick right now which had just hatched and hadn’t even earned its first profit yet. Compared to that, MCA was a full-fledged goose that laid golden eggs; the choice was obvious.

*Beep* *Beep*

As Will was thinking about all this while lying on his bed, his phone beeped on the lamp table beside him.

As he picked up the phone, he saw that he had gotten mail from Benjamin.

[Hey Will,

I’m sending the resume of that woman that I talked about earlier. It’s attached in this mail. Please find the attachment.]

Will smiled as he went through the email.

Although Benjamin had rejected his offer, he recommended someone else for the position himself too.

The person Benjamin recommended was Amanda Garcia, and she was someone who had worked directly under him and was looking for new opportunities these days.

As Will read through her resume, he found out that she was a graduate from a famous business school in New York City and worked as an executive for a middle-sized company before getting attracted to the showbiz world.

She easily cracked the Agents exam and became an agent in MCA, slowly contributing to the company and getting promotions after promotions.

As MCA started declining and the management changed, she was really unhappy with it and eventually decided to quit due to the competitiveness without getting any proper returns.. She planned on starting afresh in some new companies with the hopes of making them big.

After leaving MCA, she had worked in two companies as a senior agent. Still, both the companies failed due to high competition and shallow understanding of the industry, even though she tried her best to keep them afloat. But, one person couldn’t really amount to much, especially when she wasn’t someone who could make big decisions.

She was a middle-aged woman in her 40s and was divorced with two children.

After going through the whole of her resume, Will couldn’t help but be impressed by the feats she had achieved even though the designations she had worked as gave her limited freedom.

In the end, Will decided to have a meeting with Amanda.

He called her on the number provided on the resume and talked with her regarding the interview, to which she agreed. Even on the call, her confidence and way of talking were perfect, factors that interviewers take notice of before actually inviting someone for an interview.

***

Amanda and Will shook hands as Will gestured for her to sit down.

Amanda was a blonde-haired woman with average facial features and sharp eyes. Although she was almost 44 years old, her face didn’t have any obvious wrinkles.

She had a white shirt underneath her peach blazer with tight black pants. She gave off the vibe of a businesswoman and an entrepreneur. It was surprising how she was working under someone all this time.

Will had called her to Dream Vision Studios office, previous Krown Studios office, and she was currently in Will’s personal cabin.

Will had already renovated his own cabin. It was neat and gave a modern office vibe. His office was on the 5th storey, and so it gave quite the view from the glass window.

As the introductions were over, Will directly jumped to the basic questions.

“Why did you agree to give an interview for Dream Vision company, and can you really do the job with two of you having two kids?”

These were the most basic questions anyone would ask, and Amanda seemed prepared as she smiled and said.

“It’s obviously due to you, Will Evans. There is no name of Dream Vision Studios yet, and I’ve come for the interview solely based on your fame. And I’ve been working in the industry for a long time, my kids, when they were kids, didn’t give me any trouble, now they’re grown-up teenagers, so they’re doing fine on their own.”

Will was impressed by her straightforward answer. Obviously, Dream Vision Studios was yet to become something that people would recognize just from its name. Amanda decided to give the interview because she was betting on ‘Will Evans’ rather than ‘Dream Vision Studios’ itself.

“Okay, I get your point. Tell me this, if I appointed you as the CEO, what would you do to make my company known to people and Hollywood.”

Will asked a question that would concern many new start-ups in Hollywood.

“It won’t be easy, I would say. But considering your current fame in Hollywood, even though it is temporary, it could give us a boost. We have to keep one thing in mind: Will and Dream Vision’s images are the same. So the company would directly determine your fame and vice versa.”

She said as she made some hand gestures during the process while continuing.

“We need to sell ‘you’. We need to sell Will Evans and capture the market. Although I wouldn’t like to force you to do things, it would be really great if you could do interviews and such in the media, and it would directly affect the company’s image after all.”

After that, she continued to talk about how they should engage with social media. As it was 2011, social media was still relatively unused by Hollywood Companies.

Amanda proposed that they engage more with people and have a special team for that, directly promoting their future movies.

Will was very satisfied with all her answers as he himself has thought of many of these while the others she mentioned had never crossed his mind but were great ideas nonetheless.

As the meeting was coming to an end, Will decided to ask a very sensitive question. Sensitive, not for her, but himself.

“What do you think about my age? You do know that I’m still young; why did you still decide to give the interview?”

This was, in fact, a hot topic in current Hollywood. There were many speculations and criticisms regarding Will’s age, and most of them had speculated him as a one-time miracle.

And that his fame would die down soon enough, just like those teenage breakout stars who lose it all quite soon.

“Well, it’s pretty simple, actually. You had earned quite a lot of money, and you could have decided to live on it for the rest of your life. But instead of that, you set up a company, decided to avoid the parties you were invited to, and didn’t involve yourself with one girl after the other. It’s reasoning enough for me to trust that you’ve your own plans, so I’d like to be a part of them.”

Amanda replied with a straight face as she looked Will directly into his eyes, clearly showing her honestly.

It was true that Will was invited to many Hollywood parties and such after his big break, but he didn’t attend any, neither did he spend money like a fool and decided to buy a company first.

Will was sure that Amanda had studied him even before he invited her for an interview, and thus, she was quite well prepared. Apart from all that, he took quite a liking to Amanda’s straightforward character and ideas, so he decided to give her the job.

“Welcome to Dream Vision Studios!”

He said as they shook hands.