Revenge Begins: Reincarnated as a Hated Idol!-Chapter 51: Generous Deal
The following day, when Aren reached the set of Symphony of Shadows, he was met with grinning faces on Fin Jacobs, Kane Weace, and the remaining crew.
Their expressions were as if they had won a jackpot—and indeed, they had.
The Symphony of Shadows production team had finally signed a deal with a platform.
The platform not only agreed to invest in and produce the drama; it even agreed to pay high salaries to the crew and the director.
Due to this reason, Aren received a passionate hug from Fin Jacobs, the director: "Thank you, Aren. You are my lucky star."
His voice sounded gleeful and excited, opposite to his usual calm demeanor.
Fin Jacobs had received the highest salary of his lifetime in this deal, and he couldn’t be any happier about it.
"Why are you so happy?" Aren was still in the dark about the good news and thus asked with a puzzled expression.
Hearing his question, Fin Jacobs stared at Aren momentarily before remembering that he hadn’t shared the news with him.
"We finally have a platform." Smiling gleefully, he shared. "We signed the deal today."
"Oh," Aren raised his brows with interest before asking curiously: "Which one?"
"It’s Phoenix," Fin Jacobs replied with a wide grin. "They offered the highest amount among all the offers. Even the crew’s salaries are generous."
Phoenix was a giant among the streaming platforms, standing on the same level as Dragon Films, CloudPlay, and Sun Films.
After To Your Heart’s successful finale, many platforms had reached out to the production team with offers that the production team didn’t even dare to ask for on their own. 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮
Even AxisPlay, the platform popular for being stingy, had offered generous terms, comparable to those of heavyweights like Cloud Play and Sun Films.
Dragon Films was the only platform that didn’t show interest in acquiring Symphony of Shadows. They weren’t in need of a show to air since they already had New Dawn scheduled to release in the summer.
Meanwhile, other platforms were clearly interested in using Aren’s drama to rake in profits while his popularity was still high.
Even now, fans were obsessed with him and the tragic ending of Shin, discussing it on forums fervently.
However, what surprised the platforms even more was the follower count of Aren’s PulseX profile.
Before To Your Heart, his follower count had only been around a few hundred thousand; however, now it was over five million.
This increase had even made it into the trending topics on PulseX yesterday, reflecting Aren’s rising popularity.
Due to Shin’s cool character, fans admired and loved him, and due to the tragic end where he left without even meeting Nataly, fans were left sympathizing with him.
Many viewers instantly turned into Aren fans after such a finale.
Since Aren didn’t appear much in public, fans could only associate him with the character he played, and Shin was their favorite, providing Aren with an obsessive fan base.
After studying the current trend, many popularity charts had ranked Aren as first on the rising stars list.
Noticing all these indicators of his popularity, the platforms knew that even if Aren’s next drama as a lead wasn’t up to the mark, his current popularity would surely attract viewers and advertisements to the show, allowing the platform to generate enormous amounts of profit.
The platforms didn’t wish to let such an opportunity escape from their hands, and that too when they didn’t have to produce their own show and could simply produce an independent drama with an assembled crew.
To that end, CloudPlay, AxisPlay, Phoenix, and Sun Films all offered lucrative terms and a high budget; however, what made a difference for the production team was that only Phoenix agreed to share ten percent of the drama’s profit with Aren as per the contract.
Since they were the ones producing the show, the platforms usually kept all the profits for themselves; however, Phoenix broke that norm with this deal.
Of course, it was because Aren was also putting his salary at risk. If the drama flopped, he would earn nothing, and the platform wouldn’t have to pay the high salary of the drama’s lead.
Phoenix, too, had seen the article regarding Aren’s eight million salary, and if they guessed it right, he would ask a whole lot this time.
Eight million as a rookie and that too from the stingy AxisPlay already put Phoenix on their guard, and sharing profits even made them more inclined to agree.
Since they were putting aside an enormous budget for the drama, the show would have to cross 90,000+ in popularity score to generate a significant amount of profits, and even though Aren was popular, it was still a challenging task.
If the profits were little, Aren might even lose out by taking a ten percent share while the platform would have a show to add to their drama library for future rewatches, still generating profit even if the drama didn’t turn out to be a massive hit.
...
With the renewed budget, suddenly new filming equipment adorned the set as the shooting commenced.
This scene was with Lisa, playing the lover of Chris, the frail twin.
Sitting in a cafe, they spoke their dialogues.
"Let’s go tomorrow to that painting exhibition you wanted to see so badly." Lisa suggested with a smile.
"S-s-sorry... I-I have to... g-go pick up my brother." Chris answered with his signature stammer.
Lisa looked down, disappointed by that answer. "Oh alright." She smiled bitterly.
"Cut—!"
The shooting went on till the afternoon; however, Aren noticed something strange with Lisa today.
Her face, which usually remained smiling, was solemn today, and she seemed anxious.
Aren could see her tremble from time to time while doing the scenes, almost as if she had something gnawing at her mind.
She seemed distracted, her mind somewhere else.
After the shoot was over, he went to her makeup room to ask her about it.
However, just as he was about to knock on the door, he heard an angry shout from inside, belonging to a man: "Don’t you understand? The head of the acting department wants you to go to his house tonight!"
"I won’t!" Lisa’s crying yet defiant voice replied. "I have seen his lustful stares towards me. I know what he wants!"
"So what?" The man scoffed. "To gain something from him, you just need to give something he wants in return."
Smack!
A sound of a slap came from inside, and it was at this moment Aren barged in without even knocking, visibly worried for Lisa’s safety.
-----------------------------------
(A/N - Thanks for reading. ^..^)
