HWI 302
Hollywood What If Chapter 302
Harvey Weinstein took a deep breath and sat down. But his mind did not settle.
'Why is this happening to me? I haven't done anything wrong. Why do people hate me?'
Harvey Weinstein was one of the major shareholders of Miramax, he was the current CEO. He started the company with his brother, and so far their business has been good.
They couldn't compete with the Big Six, but most of the movies they produced won Academy Awards, which gave them a good amount of profit in the DVD market.
Videotapes were becoming obsolete, and most people had been using DVD players since the turn of the century.
For Miramax, as long as their movie won an award at the Oscars, they had a sure path to profit.
All they had to do was put "Award Winning Director/Actor" on the cover of the DVD and it would get people's attention.
The influence of the Academy Awards was strong at that time and people respected the Academy's taste in movies.
The last time Miramax promoted Good Will Hunting, they expected a good Oscar haul. But in the end they only got Best Supporting Actor. No big deal, the movie still made money on the DVD market.
Matt Damon and Ben Affleck distanced themselves from him after Good Will Hunting. Well, a lot of people distanced themselves from Harvey after The Blair Witch Project.
But Harvey could not get over the fact that this was the nth time Grey Pictures had screwed him.
Harvey Weinstein had a strong connection in Hollywood and he found out that Grey Pictures was the reason why his identity as the investor of The Blair Witch Project came out to the public. He was still angry about it... He actually wanted to hire a hit man, but he knew the consequences if he did.
'I am not an evil person. I will never do anything bad to another person._
Harvey said to himself. He was not a bad person, he strongly believed.
Maybe he was just horny, so he did things to women? Or maybe he thought he was a saint who would never hurt anyone. Maybe he was delusional.
The #MeToo movement showed the true color of Hollywood, and Harvey Weinstein suffered the most.
It was actually sad that a bunch of news about sexual harassment, sexual abuse, and r*pe culture came to the surface in the 2010s, when this kind of stuff had been happening for a couple of decades. As if people were just hearing about r*pe for the first time... Well, the media just turned a blind eye to the injustice of little people in Hollywood.
The Internet was the reason the #MeToo movement was successful in the first place.
Actress Virginia Rappe was sexually assaulted in 1921. The rapist lost his career.
Director Roman Polanski raped a 13-year-old girl. The director fled the United States. He was filming The Pianist this year. It was a mystery how the Academy allowed the director to participate in the Oscars.
Patricia Douglas, a movie extra, was r*ped by an employee of MGM. The actress was blacklisted in Hollywood after this incident.
Injustice at its finest.
These are just some of the information about sexual harassment in Hollywood. If we were to list them all, this chapter might not be enough. I just wanted to say that Hollywood was never a paradise. A lot of creepy people lived there. Epstein Island and Diddy's parties were probably just the tip of the iceberg.
You know, the Internet was a fucked up place, but it did some good. At least people had platforms to speak their minds. Unlike the news networks that were bought and would never tell the truth.
Too bad a lot of social media platforms got filtered in the next decade. One day, people were no longer allowed to express their feelings.
"Fucking shit--!"
Harvey Weinstein pounded his fists on the table. No matter how much he tried to calm down, he could not get over the fact that Grey Pictures had screwed up his business again.
Grey Pictures and 20th Century Fox announced that they would release Mr. And Mrs. Smith on August 7, 2002.
That sounds about right... But this would be a disaster for Miramax. Because their movie would also be released on the same day.
Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams was produced by Miramax. Mind you, the production cost of this movie was $38 million. Obviously, Miramax had put a lot of money into this project.
However, Grey Pictures decided to release their movies on the same day. This would hurt the box office of Spy Kids 2 tremendously.
CCU movies always have a good opening.
It was impossible to change the release schedule because Miramax had already talked to the Cinema Alliance.
Their initial agreement was that Spy Kids 2 would get 4000 theaters, but earlier Cinema Alliance told him that Spy Kids 2 could only get 3300 theaters.
Cinema Alliance decided to support Mr. And Mrs. Smith instead of Spy Kids 2. They gave it 4000 theaters on opening day.
This was enough to ensure that Mr. And Mrs. Smith would make a lot of money on its first day.
This fact made Harvey Weinstein furious.
Out of spite, he decided to contact his usual middleman to bring young, unknown actresses to his office... He wanted to cool off.
He knew the shit had hit the fan and it was impossible to change it, so he might as well calm down... Despite the blood boiling anger.
Most of the time, Harvey would promise these young actresses that he would give them roles in his next projects to entice them, and it worked.
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Kazir had five movies scheduled for release this year. Three of them have already premiered and are currently making money at the box office.
The Hangover Part 3 just grossed over $360 million worldwide. It looks like this will be the last installment of this franchise for the time being. Warner Brothers could no longer afford the cast.
The Bourne Supremacy grossed $190 million at the North American box office and its international release would start next week, in August.
Meet The Fockers was in its 15th day of release and the movie made $172 million.
So far, the three movies have done well... They actually did great.
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[Author's note: Yes, I'm back. The typhoon left the country, but it had a chance to come back for some reason. What the hell, this typhoon almost ripped the siding off our roof and now it's asking for round 2? How can a motherfucking typhoon turn around and make a comeback? What the hell is a Fujiwara effect anyway? This isn't nice at all.]
[This typhoon is probably the most devastating typhoon we have seen in recent years. The wind is so scary that I feel like our roof is going to be blown off, I'm not kidding. Some of my relatives also suffered from the flood because their house is near the river, luckily they are all fine. I feel sorry for the people and families who lost a lot in this disaster. I was hoping that this damn typhoon will never come again... But from the news report, Typhoon Kristine will probably return, fuck!].