Versatile Superstar: Rise In Hollywood - Chapter 186

On the sets of the advertisement of Spirit, Aiden was working since morning. He was only shooting a 45 seconds ad but it was not easy work.

Ads take a whole day to shoot a lot of times even if they look easy to shoot or are very short.

He was fine with it as it was still a new and enjoyable experience for him.

“Aiden, could you show a bit more expression. David, try to look at the sky as you are drinking. Understand?”

The director of the ad said as he looked over to Aiden and David who both were holding a can of Spirit in their hands. It was the final scene of the commercial in which both of them would drink Spirit together and then the name of the product would come on the screen.

But they were having trouble shooting it. Aiden had already drunk 3 cans of the soft drink.

“Just nod and don’t show any expression.” David whispered to him and he nodded to the director.

Frowning, the director sat back in his chair and shouted.

“Let’s take a five minute break.”

The crew and the extras scattered around hearing that. Some talked among themselves while others went off to smoke or to the bathroom.

It was already close to the evening and they had been shooting since the morning. All of them were pretty tired.

“Are you okay? You have drunk a lot of soft drinks already?”

As Aiden walked out of the green screen, Tom, his newly assigned assistant, walked towards him. He was the one who had accompanied him to the ad shoot.

He was a young guy with brown hair and a sharp face.

“I’m fine. Just they taste a bit too sweet for my taste. I actually like another flavour of the drink better.”

“You can’t do anything. This one sells a lot more.” Tom glanced towards the green coloured Spirit can with a lot of labels stuck to it.

“At least, after this, I don’t have to drink this.”

“Oh, well actually, they sent 50 of those just yesterday in the office. Brands normally do that as a sign of goodwill.”

“What?”

Aiden was very surprised hearing that but thinking about it, even EXO had given him free clothes after the shoot for them. He dismissed it as a marketing ploy by the brands.

“Don’t worry, the others will finish all of them off.”

Tom said, shaking his head and chuckling.

Aiden had instructed him to just speak casually. He didn’t want his employees to feel uncomfortable, especially because they were going to work for a very long time.

“That’s a relief.”

As they were talking, Aiden’s phone suddenly rang.

‘It must be Uncle Sam or my mom.’

Thinking that, he took it out but to his surprise, it was Wade. Picking it up, he opened his mouth.

“Hello, Aiden. Are you still at the ad shoot?”

His rough voice came out of the other side.

“Yeah, it would probably end in an hour. Why? What happened?”

“There’s good news. At least I feel like it’s good news.”

Wade’s excited voice came out. Aiden realised that it might be something big for Wade to sound like this.

“What happened? Don’t tell me you’re getting married?”

“Uh, no. I’m not even thinking of proposing yet. Anyway, it’s related to work. I actually got my hands on two great projects. Both seem like something that you would love.”

“Really?”

Aiden became excited too hearing that. A good script that could make him want to do the role. He was searching like that for a while now.

“Yeah, I’m coming to the studio where the ad shoot is going on. Let’s talk about a nearby cafe. I would tell you more about it in detail.”

Saying that, Wade cut the call and Aiden was left wondering what type of scripts it would be during the whole shoot.

***

Wade arrived at the ad studio pretty quickly and it took half an hour for Aiden to give a good take that the director liked.

David Sylvester asked him to come to a party with him but Aiden had to reject him saying he needed to talk to his agent about a new script. The older action star didn’t mind it, appreciating the work ethic and exchanged numbers with him.

He even said that it would be fun to work with him one day.

After that, both he and Wade left for a cafe. He told Tom that the work for today was over as he wanted to talk to Wade alone. Tom was more than happy with it and left.

In the cafe, both of them found an empty corner seat and started talking after ordering two cups of coffee.

“So, today, I went to a few production houses to know what type of projects they were working for and tried to get some information for you. There was a lot of stuff, scripts just laying around but I found two projects that looked perfect for you.”

Wade began and Aiden had a lot of questions hearing that.

“They aren’t offered to me?”

“Not yet but the production house was more than happy to give me the synopsis when I talked about you, so they are very much interested. It’s about if you are interested or not.”

Saying that, Wade pulled out two documents.

Both of them were synopsis of the project. If Aiden liked them, he could request for a script to prepare for the auditions.

“Let’s talk about this one first. I feel like you are much more likely to like it.”

Wade tapped one of the documents and pushed it towards Aiden. He read the name that was written in the middle of it in his mind.

‘[Disconnected].’

It didn’t tell Aiden a lot about the movie. It could just be another rom com about the connection between two people? Or something different.

“How do you like the name?” Wade asked.

“It doesn’t tell me a lot about the story. What’s it about?”

“It’s a business drama. Kind of like [Wall Street Thug] but different. It has other elements like entrepreneurship and what it takes to build a fortune. A lot of things mixed in it.”

Aiden recalled [Wall Street Thug]. It was a story of a guy who cracked the code of being a stockbroker but eventually started doing illegal business, eventually becoming one of the richest men in America.

That movie was filled with profanity and a lot of drama but Aiden had liked it.

“It looks interesting.”

Muttering that, he turned up a page and started reading the synopsis. It wasn’t a script but it was enough for him to understand the basic premise of the story.

Moreover, it was pretty thin.

‘So, it’s about a group of friends working together to build up a company, eventually making one of the leading social media sites – Snapbook.’

That was the basic premise of [Disconnected].

The main character started off as a college student in 2007 who heard about social media sites coming up and would try to make something similar, only to get friends involved in it who would innovate to make the site way better.

These friends would become the owners of one of the fastest growing social media sites, getting millions of investments and becoming young millionaires.

But after getting money, their friendship would get strained as they would face the cold truth of the corporate world, eventually starting to plot against each other.

It was a pretty dramatic plot and one that could potentially become a great movie.

“Is it a biopic? It’s giving that feeling?” Aiden looked up and asked Wade who shook his head.

“No, you could say it’s inspired but it’s not a biopic. The production house doesn’t want to make a movie about a rich billionaire because they could easily get a controversy like that. They want the movie to not be attached to anyone.”

“So, the director just wants to show what money does to people?”

Wade nodded his head to that question. The only reason he had thought that [Disconnected] would be good for Aiden was because of its themes about money, greed, power and eventually falling out.

“How do you like the story?”

“It looks good.” Aiden said after thinking for a bit. “I like the main character and how the story talks about his personality changing as he gets more power and money. It’s pretty much the standard becoming the rich guy story.”

“Yeah, but this one has capable people behind it, so you could bet that the execution won’t be bad. Moreover, people do love a story like this. [Wall Street Thug] earned over 300 million dollars for a reason.”

These types of movies generally give people an insight on how the people whose names are attached to the word ‘success’ reached there.

So, their interest was natural.

“So, what do you say? Should we go for it?”

Wade looked at Aiden who lowered his head, his eyes scanning the words written on the synopsis. It was a description about a main character.

‘A man slowly changes to become something different than what he was initially. The change is constant through the story and it’s basically a portrayal of him falling into depravity and becoming more and more cruel. It’s not something I have done before.’

Aiden thought in his mind. All of his characters till now haven’t gotten this type of character development. Kai was a character who actually never got any development as he was shown like a crazy villain from the start.

In [Shadows of War], his role was for the main character’s development and in [30 days of Happiness], Arthur had gone through positive development after accepting his situation.

He hadn’t played someone that was slowly falling to become a horrible character.

…