Monday, September 11, 2023
After finishing filming Curve, Owen finally had something he hadn't been able to enjoy much over the past few weeks.
Free time.
From Friday, September 8 to Sunday, September 10, he traveled to Canada to attend the Toronto International Film Festival.
As its name suggested, the festival was held in Toronto, Ontario, during the month of September, and it was one of the largest, busiest, and most important film gatherings in the world.
It wasn't part of the traditional European group known as the Big Three, Cannes, Venice, and Berlin, but in terms of industry presence, stars, buyers, studios, and commercial impact, it could easily be mentioned in the same conversation.
It was also one of the most heavily attended film events in North America.
For Owen, however, that weekend was almost like a short vacation.
After several weeks spent moving between meetings, Chronicle, and finally the two days of filming Curve, spending a couple of days without personally having to take care of anything sounded pretty good.
He didn't have any movie competing there. He could simply walk around Toronto, eat, watch movies, and spend time with Jenna.
Although staying unnoticed turned out to be considerably more difficult.
Owen already attracted a considerable amount of attention on his own whenever he appeared at a premiere.
With Jenna by his side, even more so.
Since making their relationship public in May, the two of them had quickly become one of the young Hollywood couples that generated the most attention. Photos of them arriving at a screening together, walking around the city, or simply talking with other actors could circulate on social media for hours.
Fortunately, Owen was pretty used to that by this point, and Toronto ended up being fun.
He watched several movies he genuinely liked and, perhaps even more interestingly for him, had the opportunity to personally meet a few actors and directors he had never crossed paths with before.
Among them were four names he was particularly happy to meet: Michael Keaton, Sean Penn, Nicolas Cage, and Willem Dafoe.
Owen might have awards, successful movies, and enough recognition for any of them to know perfectly well who he was when he approached them.
That didn't stop a small part of his brain from continuing to think: I'm talking to Willem Dafoe.
He had grown up watching movies starring those people.
Now he could find himself having a completely normal conversation with them.
In his previous life, he had finally achieved success with his last movie, but before that he had spent ten years in the film industry, and even then he had never had the opportunity to meet names like these.
But the main reason he had gone to Toronto was Jenna.
She did have a movie there: Finestkind.
A crime drama starring Ben Foster, Toby Wallace, Tommy Lee Jones, and Jenna, who had an important role in the story.
Naturally, Owen went with her to the premiere, and after watching it...
Well.
The movie was strange. He wouldn't say it was terrible. It was perfectly possible to sit through it from beginning to end. But he couldn't exactly say he had liked it very much either.
The story began as a relatively intimate drama centered around a family involved in commercial fishing and, at some point, seemed to remember that it also wanted to be a crime thriller.
The shift never quite felt natural. There were good performances and scenes that worked, but the overall result was fairly uneven.
'If you turn your brain off a little, it's watchable,' Owen had thought as the credits began to roll.
It wasn't exactly the highest praise he could give a movie.
And apparently, he had been fairly generous.
After the premiere, the first reviews from critics attending Toronto began to appear, and many of them were considerably harsher.
The initial consensus ended up being negative.
On Rotten Tomatoes, the reception hovered at barely 37%, with several reviews pointing to similar problems: a cast considerably better than the material they had been given, a confusing script, crime clichés, and tonal shifts that were far too abrupt.
It was a movie that seemed to want to be three different things and could never quite decide which one.
Jenna, at least, came out of it relatively well.
Several reviews noted that she brought charisma and presence whenever she appeared, even if her character couldn't completely escape the limitations of the script either.
Owen pretty much agreed, trying to set aside his natural tendency to praise her because she was his girlfriend.
There was another curious detail about watching her on screen.
Owen had to sit there and watch his girlfriend kiss another man on a huge screen in front of hundreds of people.
More than once.
It wasn't anything particularly intense.
A few kisses.
Nothing remotely close to a sex scene, and being an actor himself, Owen processed those things very differently from someone completely outside the industry.
It was work.
Jenna had already had to sit in Cannes and watch him kiss Emma Watson, who had played Skylar in Good Will Hunting.
And that had included scenes considerably more intimate than anything in Finestkind.
Besides, Jenna had filmed the movie during 2022.
Long before the two of them had started dating.
So feeling retroactively jealous over a scene filmed when they weren't even together would have been pretty ridiculous.
If anything, he found it amusing.
Especially considering that the few romantic scenes in Finestkind were extremely innocent compared to what Owen might have had to do in front of a camera if he had ultimately agreed to star in something like Babygirl.
Finestkind wouldn't have much of a commercial life after Toronto either.
Paramount owned the rights and had decided to release it directly on its streaming platform rather than give it a traditional theatrical release.
After watching it, Owen could perfectly understand the decision, even though he wasn't a big fan of that kind of business model for movies.
Finestkind was one of those movies capable of bringing together recognizable names, having competent production values, and still ending up feeling like a relatively minor project for almost everyone involved and a fairly forgettable one.
Jenna, moreover, had accepted the movie before her professional situation changed completely.
When she filmed it, in March 2022, Wednesday hadn't been released yet.
She hadn't yet become one of the most famous young actresses in Hollywood.
She hadn't even made The Spectacular Now with Owen and A24.
So Owen wasn't about to sit there and criticize her for accepting Finestkind either.
He was pretty demanding when it came to scripts.
Sometimes too demanding.
If someone gave him a script he didn't like, he usually lost interest almost immediately. They could offer him an appealing character, good money, or even the chance to work with someone important, but if the overall story didn't work for him, it was difficult to convince him.
In his previous life, that way of thinking probably hadn't helped him much either.
He had spent years turning things down, waiting for something that genuinely interested him and surviving on smaller jobs he enjoyed, until he finally landed an important role at twenty-seven.
Which wasn't exactly a terrible age to make it, either.
His first major movie had been a box-office success, and his performance as the villain had been the most praised one and the one audiences liked the most, ultimately earning him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
But it had required patience.
Most actors didn't have as much patience as he did at the beginning of their careers, nor were they quite as selective.
You want to make a living as an actor, so if something reasonably decent came along, you accepted it. You gained experience, connections, and a paycheck that allowed you to keep making a living from acting.
Keep your career moving forward.
Jenna had done exactly that.
Like practically everyone else.
Owen, fortunately, had an enormous advantage in this life. He had an entire library of movies and series inside his head.
Stories that had worked in his previous world.
If nobody offered him something that interested him, he could create it himself.
And he had already gotten past the hardest bottleneck, which was the beginning.
Now he had a fortune that would soon surpass one hundred million dollars in liquid assets, probably by December of that year. That allowed him to finance everything himself without having to convince anyone and do it however he wanted.
That was why he could afford to wait, and when he finally accepted a project that wasn't his own, he did it because he genuinely wanted to.
Like Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein. A finished script he had loved and a character that had managed to hook him almost from the very first read.
The Creature.
In fact, at that exact moment, Owen was in one of Netflix's offices.
He was sitting on a comfortable couch in a lobby. Officially, he was going to play the Creature in Frankenstein.
He had left the conference room a few minutes earlier, where he had spent most of the day with Larry, legal representatives, Netflix executives, and several people whose jobs seemed to consist mainly of showing up during the final stages of a negotiation to discuss numbers and clauses.
Owen had already signed. Now he was simply waiting for Larry so they could leave.
Larry and his CAA agent were still inside with part of the Netflix team, finishing up a few matters related to the schedule.
The talks had started shortly after that first meeting with Guillermo at the end of August and had lasted almost two weeks.
It had taken that long because of the negotiations: money, credits, promotion, filming conditions, scheduling, and clauses related to prosthetics, long working days, and all the peculiarities that would probably come with playing a character like that.
Owen signed a contract worth 6.5 million dollars. With the possibility of earning up to another 1.5M in bonuses.
The structure was fairly simple.
If he received a major nomination at the Golden Globes, SAG Awards, or BAFTAs, he would receive 250,000 dollars.
If he won any of those awards, another 250,000.
An Oscar nomination would add 500,000 dollars, and winning it would mean another 500,000.
In the perfect scenario, the contract could end up reaching eight million dollars.
Of course, even the guaranteed 6.5 million didn't mean Owen could simply put that exact amount into his bank account.
Hollywood had far too many people around every paycheck for that.
CAA took its commission.
The agency hadn't only been involved through his agent, but also through lawyers and specialists responsible for reviewing and negotiating the contractual terms.
Ten percent.
Then there was Larry.
His manager.
The person who knew Owen's schedule better than anyone, the projects he wanted to make, the ones he didn't want to touch, and how far he was willing to compromise on certain conditions.
Another ten percent.
Between the two of them, approximately 1.3 million dollars disappeared before Owen could truly consider the rest his own.
That left him with around 5.2 million, and taxes still had to be paid.
Sometimes the headlines about actors' salaries were a little misleading when they leaked.
He wouldn't even receive the remaining 5.2 million all at once.
The payment was divided into different stages.
Upon signing, he would receive approximately thirty percent of the agreed salary.
After deducting the corresponding commissions, that meant around one and a half million dollars would enter his account sometime between that day and the next few days.
The rest would be released as he fulfilled the different stages of the contract and filming progressed.
Much less exciting than the image of receiving one gigantic check.
There was another element of the contract that had required quite a bit of coordination.
The schedule.
The production of Frankenstein was officially scheduled to begin on February 26, 2024.
Owen, however, wouldn't be there.
He couldn't.
Throughout January and much of February, he would be busy with Chronicle, and after that he had another commitment that was impossible to move.
The Oscars.
The ceremony would take place on Sunday, March 10, 2024.
Considering Good Will Hunting's awards potential, nobody on his team was willing to organize his schedule under the assumption that Owen wouldn't have to attend.
So they had reached a fairly simple solution.
Owen would join the filming of Frankenstein on Monday, March 11.
One day after the Oscars.
That meant Guillermo would begin the movie approximately two weeks earlier without him.
It wasn't too serious of a problem.
The Creature might be one of the central characters in the story, but he didn't appear for one hundred percent of the runtime.
Guillermo and the crew would simply organize the production schedule to make use of those first two weeks with the rest of the cast.
Then, on March 11, Owen would officially join the shoot.
Probably still tired from the ceremony the night before and almost certainly heading straight into a makeup chair for several hours.
With not much else to do while he waited for Larry, Owen pulled out his phone and opened Instagram.
His follower count had risen to 21.4 million.
A month earlier, he had barely been approaching 20.5.
Part of that increase was simply organic growth. Then there were the two posts he had made in September.
The first was the carousel he had uploaded after finishing Curve with Curry, Cooper, Inde, and the others.
It had only been up for six days and was already approaching four million likes. Not bad for announcing a short film without even showing a trailer.
Then he went to his latest post.
A photo in Toronto with Jenna. But not from a premiere, nor a picture taken by a professional photographer.
Just a selfie of him and Jenna walking during the day along one of Toronto's streets.
A casual photo.
The caption was pretty simple:
📸 visiting Toronto 🤑 with @jennaortega
5.1 million likes and more than forty thousand comments.
Owen nodded slowly. He was right.
He tapped Jenna's tagged name and went to her profile. Her latest post was also from Toronto.
But she had chosen the exact opposite.
A photograph taken during the Finestkind premiere: red carpet and perfect lighting.
Jenna completely done up for the event, with flawless hair and makeup.
Owen stood beside her in a dark suit, one hand around her waist as they both looked toward the photographers.
A perfectly professional photograph.
📸 With him ❤️
Owen looked at the numbers: 4.9 million likes.
A smile slowly appeared on his face, along with a thought at the caption, 'Cheater.'
They had made a bet in Toronto.
It had all started when Owen, while checking some metrics on his phone, had commented that spontaneous photos of a couple generally generated more engagement than overly perfect images from a red carpet or campaign.
Jenna had looked at him as if she had just discovered she was dating the marketing manager of a tech company.
She had never fully understood how seriously Owen treated his social media.
To Owen, social media was a free promotional tool in front of tens of millions of people.
Keeping an active audience meant that whenever he wanted to promote a movie, a short film, or any Second Take Films project, he wouldn't have to start from scratch.
Jenna operated in almost the exact opposite way.
Her Instagram was focused more on premieres, brand campaigns, the occasional photoshoot, and maybe the end of a shoot.
After that, she could disappear for months without feeling the slightest need to post anything.
That was why, when Owen had started seriously talking to her about engagement, she had teased him a little about how seriously he took it.
Then Owen had made the bet.
Even though Jenna had around ten million more followers than he did, Owen insisted that his profile, which was much more active, would have a higher percentage of likes, and that a casual photo of the two of them would get more likes than a professional one.
Jenna had accepted, and now Owen was winning.
He narrowed his eyes slightly and read the caption again, 'Definitely cheating.'
Because Jenna almost never wrote things like that.
She wasn't especially sentimental, and even less so on social media.
A simple With him accompanied by a heart practically seemed designed to make her followers lose their minds, and it was working.
But fortunately, Owen was still winning.
"Owen."
Hearing his name, he looked up and found Guillermo del Toro standing a few feet away.
For a moment, he looked surprised.
"Guillermo," Owen said, getting up from the couch, and the two greeted each other with a handshake.
Guillermo hadn't been present during the negotiation.
He didn't have much reason to be.
Owen's salary, commissions, contractual clauses, and all the financial back-and-forth were matters between Netflix, CAA, Larry, and the lawyers.
The director had already made it very clear that he wanted Owen to play the Creature.
From there, the numbers belonged to other people.
Guillermo gestured vaguely toward one of the hallways, "I'm working in a room here today," he explained, "I can't always hide away at Bleak House."
Owen smiled.
"How did it go?" Guillermo asked.
"I already signed," Owen replied.
The director's expression changed immediately, "You did?"
"Yeah. I'm just waiting for Larry. He's still inside finishing up a few things," Owen confirmed.
A broad smile appeared on Guillermo's face, "That's great. You're officially my monster," he said, giving him a friendly pat on the shoulder.
Owen let out a small laugh, "Looks like it."
Guillermo seemed genuinely pleased.
Now there was nothing hypothetical about it anymore.
Owen then remembered something, "By the way... Frankenstein is getting a limited theatrical release, right?"
Guillermo's smile faded slightly. It didn't disappear, but it changed, "Yeah, you know how Netflix is."
Owen nodded.
"We'll get some kind of theatrical release," Guillermo continued, "Pretty selective. A few major cities, independent theaters, maybe certain chains willing to accept the terms, but don't expect a traditional worldwide rollout."
"Two weeks?"
"Probably something like that. Maybe twenty-one days if we're lucky," Guillermo replied.
Owen nodded slowly.
That was basically a window for awards qualification and prestige.
Not a real theatrical run.
Guillermo made a slight grimace, "What matters to them is that it ends up on the platform."
There was the problem.
Netflix could spend an enormous amount of money producing a movie and still treat the theatrical release almost like a formality.
Not because they thought the movie was bad.
Simply because their business didn't depend on selling tickets.
It depended on gaining and retaining subscribers.
A movie like Frankenstein wasn't, to Netflix, a product that needed to earn back one hundred and twenty million dollars at the box office.
It was premium content for their permanent catalog.
Guillermo del Toro.
Oscar Isaac.
Owen Ashford.
Mia Goth.
An adaptation of one of the most recognizable novels in history.
All of that served to generate conversation, awards, subscriptions, and brand value.
The box office was secondary.
Owen remained silent, thinking. He understood the business logic.
That didn't mean he liked it.
Because, unlike Finestkind, this didn't seem like a movie whose natural destination was streaming.
There were few reasons to spend tens of millions more on worldwide marketing and distribution.
Frankenstein was something else. A movie on a scale many times larger.
If Owen was judging the script he had read correctly, it also had fairly serious commercial potential.
But it wasn't even only about money. It was a movie that should be seen in a theater.
Guillermo wasn't making some small movie meant to play in the background while someone checked their phone on the couch.
It wasn't simply another job. It was the project he had spent decades imagining.
Years and years of accumulating ideas until someone had finally given him enough money to make it at exactly the scale he wanted.
Now, after all that, most people were going to watch it for the first time from their couch at home.
"It's a shame, this movie should be seen in theaters with a worldwide release," Owen finally said.
Guillermo let out a small, tired laugh, "You're talking to the wrong person if you want to argue about that."
"Yeah, I know," Owen said.
Guillermo gave him a slightly strange look because of the way he had said it.
As if there was something more behind those words.
But before he could ask, a door opened at the end of the hallway.
Larry appeared.
When he saw Guillermo, he walked over to greet him respectfully, and the two exchanged a few words. After that, Owen and Larry finally said goodbye to the director and started walking toward the exit of the Netflix offices.
As he made his way through the hallways, Owen also couldn't ignore the other side of the matter.
Without Netflix, maybe this version of Frankenstein wouldn't even exist.
Few traditional studios were willing to hand over around one hundred and twenty million dollars so a director could make a gothic, expansive, deeply personal adaptation of a novel published more than two centuries ago.
Netflix had.
They had financed Guillermo's vision at practically the scale he wanted.
The price was fairly obvious. Commercially, the movie had been born to live on the platform.
Owen finally walked through the building's doors, and the afternoon light hit him directly in the face, making him narrow his eyes slightly, 'For now,' he thought.
Larry had driven him there that morning, so the two walked toward his car.
Owen got into the passenger seat and closed the door.
"Where to?" Larry asked as he started the engine.
"My parents' house. I'm going to visit them," Owen replied, noticing it was almost five in the afternoon.
"Alright."
They pulled out of the parking lot.
During the first few minutes, Larry took the opportunity to explain the last few things he had finished sorting out after the signing.
The schedule was clear.
When they finished talking, the inside of the car fell silent.
Only the music playing softly and the sound of traffic remained.
Owen looked out the window for a while.
Then he noticed something.
Larry was driving with a small smile on his face.
He was also tapping his fingers against the steering wheel to the rhythm of the song and, every now and then, even humming quietly under his breath.
Owen watched him for a few seconds, "What's wrong with you?"
Larry barely turned his head, "What's wrong with me about what?"
"You look way too happy," Owen replied.
Larry laughed, "We just closed a six-and-a-half-million-dollar contract," he said.
Larry looked back at the road, "That's star money, Owen. Real star money."
"Mm, I don't know. A star could make ten, twelve, fifteen, or twenty million," Owen said, tilting his head.
Larry exhaled through his nose, "Yeah. DiCaprio. Cruise. People who've spent twenty or thirty years being an absolute guarantee for studios."
Owen didn't respond.
"Or actors locked into massive franchises after several movies," Larry continued, "Marvel, for example. Tom Holland can make enormous amounts of money once he's already doing his third Spider-Man movie. But that's not the same as being twenty-one and negotiating your first salary at this level."
He paused briefly before asking, "Do you know how much Holland made for his first Spider-Man movie when he was around your age?"
Owen glanced at him, "No."
"Around half a million dollars as a base salary. And we're talking about Spider-Man. A one-hundred-and-eighty-million-dollar production backed by Marvel and Sony, with one of the biggest intellectual properties on the planet," Larry said.
Then he quickly pointed a finger at him before returning his hand to the steering wheel, "Netflix just gave you thirteen times that. That's not normal."
For actors who were twenty-one or twenty-two, even those considered famous or clearly on the rise, a salary of five hundred thousand to one and a half million dollars for a major production could already be considered excellent.
Two million started putting someone in an especially privileged category.
Six and a half million that was a different conversation.
"We broke a record today and crossed a barrier. That's why Mark and the lawyers were smiling when we left. It's not just money, it's precedent," Larry concluded.
Owen understood that he meant his next contract would now start from this point.
Once one studio had agreed to pay him six and a half million, the next one couldn't casually walk in offering one million and expect everyone to act as if nothing had changed.
His market value had just gone up.
Owen looked through the windshield.
The afternoon sunlight was beginning to hit him directly in the eyes, so he slipped a hand into the inside pocket of his jacket, pulled out his sunglasses, and put them on, "When you put it that way, you're right."
Larry glanced at him from the corner of his eye, This guy...' he thought.
He had just landed one of the most extraordinary acting contracts someone his age could receive, and he reacted as if it were just another day at the office.
"Besides," Larry added, "you're making more than Isaac. He's over forty. An established career in film, television, and theater. He's worked with some of the most important directors in the industry. He's got franchises, prestige, a Golden Globe..."
Owen turned his head toward him, "Seriously?"
Larry nodded, "He's making 5.5 million. You're making one million more, even though he's the lead."
That surprised him a little more.
Because Oscar Isaac wasn't exactly just any actor.
He was over forty, had a completely established career in film, television, and theater, had worked with some of the most important directors in the industry, appeared in enormous franchises, and won a Golden Globe.
Besides, technically, he carried most of the weight of Frankenstein.
Victor was the central thread through much of the roughly one-hundred-and-fifty-minute movie.
Guillermo might deeply love monsters and structure the movie in such a way that, emotionally, the Creature ended up feeling like the true heart of the story.
But in strictly practical terms, Isaac would have more filming days and more screen time.
Owen tilted his head slightly, "Well... when you put it like that, it sounds pretty bad."
Larry smiled faintly and shook his head.
At the end of the day, Hollywood didn't pay exclusively for minutes on screen either.
It paid for where you were in your career, and Owen was operating at a very high level.
Larry was very happy about this. At some point, he had started to understand exactly what kind of client he had on his hands.
It must have felt somewhat similar to what some representative decades earlier had experienced while working with a very young Leonardo DiCaprio.
First, you saw talent.
Then came one success.
Then another, and at some point, you stopped wondering whether that kid was going to become a star.
The question became how far he could go.
They finally arrived at the house, and Larry parked in front of the entrance.
Before getting out, Owen invited him to stay for a while and have tea and the snacks his mother had prepared.
Matt, Jenna, Eric, and Tayler were there as well.
Larry accepted without much resistance.
After spending most of the day between offices, contracts, and negotiations, staying for a while in a much more relaxed environment didn't sound bad at all.
They both got out of the car and started walking toward the house.
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