429 Chapter 429. Good after bad
<Franco Li and Katie Brooks — How two people tried to sabotage the career of the most promising star in Hollywood.
-Hollywood Weekly.>
Reading the headline, Aiden felt a gush of joy in his heart.
His eyes were waiting to read a news like that for days now. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that this was truly out of his dreams.
It’s been two days since the news of the recording came out. It’s been chaotic all around Hollywood since then. It has been the talk of the town and even the whole country.
Even SGA was affected a lot by the whole controversy.
They had to put out a press release saying that they would be looking into it and a strict punishment would be taken against Franco Li.
Even the agent association put out a press release talking about this. The Actor’s guild had done the same thing and other major associations have gone in their footsteps too.
This was the first time something like this had happened. So many associations come forward to talk about one single topic.
But in the end, this was about the rights of an actor and how easy it was to destroy a career.
Franco wasn’t someone with a small time in Hollywood. He was the face of SGA and handled several prominent A-listers in Hollywood. Top stars would come to his office every day, so the scrutiny was on them too.
Taking this opportunity, a lot of these top stars broke their contract with SGA and Franco Li.
Top stars are majorly looking for an opportunity to go solo as they have earned enough and had investments to do it. It wasn’t like Franco was a great person to work with anyway.
It was a clash of ego a lot of times with him.
SGA was facing the backlash and the loss of money and reputation. As for Katie, she was the one who was the most shocked.
She was hearing the worst kind of words from all people. There were several videos on MeTube against her and it seemed like she was public enemy number one.
A lot of men’s right organisations have sent her a notice and she felt like she was in the middle of a witch hunt.
Even her family has stopped talking to her, calling her an embarrassment to them. In the end, she was lost and had no other choice as it was just the consequences of her decision.
“Hey, Aiden, come look at this.”
As Aiden was thinking about the whole drama in his office, Tom suddenly opened the door and came in.
He had a tablet in his hand and it seemed like he wanted to show him something.
“What is it, Tom?”
“I was going through the comments of a MeTuber who talks about females rights? She was one of the few who talked against you a lot, even went on podcasts for it and now, she’s trying to apologise. Just check the comments. The ones commenting are the same as her. People who opposed you and now, they are all sorry.”
Tom said as he shoved the tablet on Aiden’s face.
On it, the comments section of a MeTuber with over 3 million subscribers was opened. He read the comments one by one.
[Women Dater: I needed to delete my earlier comments about Aiden. Fuck Franco Li for real. I doubted a good man due to him and that bitch. I feel like I should go watch [Hex – Part 1] to compensate for it.]
pAnDa (nov)e1
[Obi Nan can blow me: Yeah, feel the same to be very honest. If the recordings hadn’t come out, a good guy’s career would have been over. From his interviews and character I always liked him a lot. The whole controversy made me turn against him and I even cancelled my plans to watch [Hex – Part 1]]
[Talking Toaster: My favourite thing to do from two days ago is to go and watch the videos of people who were speaking against Aiden just a week ago. Those guys turned in an instant some don’t even want to admit they were wrong. It’s hilarious especially because I always believed that Aiden was innocent.]
[V1RG1N: I always feel ashamed. I will never believe media reports from now on until stuff is confirmed. The whole world doesn’t feed the news. They feed whatever sells.]
Reading all those messages, Aiden felt like they were the same as the ones he had read on Sparrow. People who were against him were now saying sorry and blaming the media for all this.
“I have read hundreds of comments like this already. What are you trying to show me in it?”
Aiden asked as he looked at Tom and he hurriedly replied.
“Well, didn’t you notice that a lot of these comments talk about going to watch [Hex – Part 1] just because they feel like they have wronged a good man unintentionally?”
“I did notice it.”
“It’s not just a few people. The advance booking for [Hex – Part 1] has significantly increased in the last two days. The movie was doing average numbers but after those recordings, it’s doing the numbers of a blockbuster movie.”
The advance booking for [Hex – Part 1] started a few days ago and by then, Aiden was still public enemy number one.
So, the advance bookings have been lower than expected. The whole of Titan studios was already extremely nervous about it. Alberto was apparently calling him several times daily but Aiden had told everyone to not take any call from him.
After all, no one wanted to hear curses from the mouth of a foul man.
“Really? It changed so much.” Aiden asked. Although it was not good for a lead actor, he had forgotten about [Hex – Part 1] release in the past few days since he was in a lot of stress.
He wasn’t even tracking the advance booking numbers.
“Yes and it’s all because of you. The movie is surely going to do over a 100 million dollars just on the first day worldwide and at least 60-70 million dollars in North America. The opening weekend is 4 days before it goes down, so until then, people are expecting it to earn around 500 million dollars.”
“That’s already a big hit.” Aiden managed to say.
From what he recalled, the marketing team head has told him that 400 million dollars for the first part would be considered a hit but like this, the lifetime collections might be double of that.
That was extremely good news.
‘I guess everything is really back on line now.’
He thought in his mind and leaned against his seat with a smile on his face.
Good days always precede the bad ones and that’s what is happening. The chances of [Hex – Part 1] failing at the box office were high after the scandal but now that everything was okay and people were in Aiden’s favour, things have returned to normal.
He could even say that they were better than normal now.
‘There’s still one thing. I am not able to sleep well these days…’
The one thing that was like an annoying grain of sand in the back of his mind was Katie.
The reason she had deemed fit to betray him and if she had felt any remorse about it? The betrayal of a friend was something that was always going to be unexpected, especially when it came from one of his first friends in America.
He knew that currently, there was an almost witch hunt against her online and although he felt bad, he wasn’t going to do anything.
Everyone was responsible for their own actions and for every action, the consequences are always going to come sooner or later.
He just wanted to know if she had anything to say about it to him.
Until he knew it, he doubted he would be able to sleep peacefully.
Ring!
As he was thinking about it, his phone suddenly rang. It was a notification. Probably a message from someone.
Tom passed him his phone that was on the desk and he looked at it. It was a message from an unknown number but reading it, he had a hard time believing it.
[It’s me, Katie. Can we meet? Please.]
It was a small message but below it, there was an address and time given. Aiden recognised the address actually. It was Katie’s old apartment.
He didn’t know that she was still living there.
Reading the message, he wondered why she had decided to text him? Was it to apologise? Or she just wanted to request him to stop the witch hunt against her.
Aiden didn’t know and he didn’t care what the reason was.
He just wanted to ask his questions.