"Everyone can head home early today and spend the holiday with your families."
New Year's Eve was already approaching.
Although filming had not even lasted a full month, Alex still decided to give the crew a short break. After all, this was the biggest holiday of the year. If he refused to let people go home even now, that would be cruel even by his standards.
"Director, how many days off?"
The cameraman asked with shining eyes, as if he could already smell home-cooked food waiting at the other end of the trip.
Alex answered without changing expression.
"Be back on the third."
The entire crew fell silent.
"…"
Right. With that amount of time, half the break would probably be swallowed by airports, train stations, delays, and luggage dragged through crowded terminals.
But no one there dared complain to Alex. With him, disagreeing had two possible outcomes. In the lighter case, you packed your things and left. In the heavier case, you discovered you would never work in the industry again.
"My dear… are you calling me tonight?"
Emily leaned close to Alex's ear, her voice low and warm, wearing the kind of provocative smile that seemed designed specifically to cause trouble.
Alex caught her chin between two fingers and smiled wickedly.
"When I need you, I'll flip your card."
Emily's eyes widened at once, and she stomped hard on the top of his shoe with the tip of her high heel.
Flip her card?
Did he really think he was some kind of emperor now?
But Alex had not given everyone three days off out of kindness.
The main reason was that he also needed to clear space in his schedule to deal with other matters.
The first was the issue of hiring a new assistant.
After spending more than half a year working by his side, Nadia had finally left the position. Alex did not want to keep delaying her career, so he sent her back to acting in television dramas. Even so, after getting used to having someone arrange his schedule, serve coffee, deliver documents, and smooth out small messes before they became real problems, her absence truly felt inconvenient.
So Alex decided to hire another assistant.
This time, however, he wanted someone who had not yet entered the main celebrity circuit. Otherwise, every new assistant he brought in would stay for a year, maybe half a year, gain visibility, and then run back to acting. Constantly replacing people was far too troublesome.
Of course, even with that in mind, Alex had no intention of hiring a complete nobody.
He still planned to choose from young actresses who, in this timeline, had not yet truly become famous.
After all, this was a story about the entertainment world. Inventing an original female character out of nowhere would practically be a narrative illness.
In his previous life, Alex had read entertainment novels and anime fanfics where the author stubbornly insisted on creating an original female lead while ignoring the actresses, idols, and characters the audience actually wanted to see. It had always irritated him.
Readers were there to follow familiar stars, women with aura, characters with cultural weight. Creating someone from scratch and forcing her into the center of the story was basically asking to be ignored.
Authors like that deserved not to make money.
Alex focused mainly on girls born after 1995. As for those born after 2000, most of them were still too young.
He handed the task to his former… no, his former former assistant, Blackie.
Blackie almost cried.
He had been certain that once Nadia left, the assistant position would return to his hands.
But Alex simply wanted to hire someone else.
Was it just because he was not a woman? Did the boss despise him that much?
After disgusting himself with his own self-pity for a few seconds, Blackie returned to work and began selecting candidates with extreme seriousness.
This time, the rules were clear: any actress who was already somewhat established, even at the third-tier level, would be rejected.
They all wanted to use the position as a shortcut.
Alex, for his part, made one thing very clear. In that regard, there was only one direction allowed: he could open doors for girls, but no girl would ever use a "back door" over him.
"Boss, what do you think of these two?"
Blackie's efficiency did not disappoint. Before long, he placed two profiles in front of Alex.
The moment Alex saw the forms, his eyes lit up.
Not bad. Blackie's eye was sharp.
The first was an actress born in 1995, still minor in the market, known for a supporting role in an online romantic comedy.
The second was a girl born in 1998, with no representative work yet, currently a preliminary contestant in a music reality show, already drawing attention because of her looks.
Alex recognized both of them immediately.
One resembled the girl who, in the future, would become famous as the eccentric genius character from a university sitcom. The other was practically the future "lucky koi" of the internet, the kind of person who could go viral simply by existing.
"…Her."
After thinking for a moment, Alex pointed at the second girl's photo.
Blackie nodded repeatedly with an expression that understood everything in the most wrong way possible.
"The boss has good taste. This one just came of age. Nice and fresh."
"Fresh, my ass. The other one already passed her peak before even getting here. I need to choose someone with traffic potential."
Alex scolded him impatiently.
Blackie scratched his head, confused.
Who was this so-called "genius girl" the boss was talking about?
After deciding that the future lucky girl would become his new assistant, Alex returned his focus to restoring the scripts for Naruto and Inuyasha.
As for whether or not he could actually recruit her, he was not worried at all.
At this point, she had not yet exploded in popularity with her lucky-girl reputation, much less with that addictive chorus about burning calories. She was just a pretty, ambitious young woman with a fairly strong sensitivity to money.
Offer her a little more, and she would come running.
While Alex continued busily filming One Punch Man, both the television and film circles were in a state of lively chaos.
Without Alex, that great demon, disrupting the release calendar, many productions that had been holding their breath finally chose to premiere during the most important holiday of the year.
Among the series, if Nirvana in Fire claimed second place in both popularity and reputation, probably no one would dare claim first.
Even without Alex in the cast, his name still appeared whenever audiences discussed the series.
After all, Emily and Bella, both connected to his company, had taken part in the production. And according to rumors, both of them had been recommended by Alex.
It was impossible not to acknowledge how poisonous his eye for projects really was.
Because of that, many people started building expectations for The Youth Years, a youth drama also recommended by him, starring the company's leading young actress after Bleach.
Compared with the television side, however, the film industry that holiday seemed… poor.
Of course, that was Alex's opinion as someone who knew another timeline.
The three most talked-about major productions of the season were a new comedy by Stephen Chow, the sci-fi film Fortress City, and a family comedy starring a famous stand-up duo.
As for the first two, those who knew, knew. The third was heavyweight for a completely different reason.
When a production came from that comedy troupe and was missing precisely the veteran who usually saved the jokes, the quality was easy to imagine.
What Alex found even more bizarre was that, when he left the company to return to the One Punch Man set, several reporters were waiting to interview him.
They all wanted to know what he thought of the holiday films that year.
Alex was almost numb.
He did not even have a movie premiering during that period. Why the hell were they asking him?
But there was no mystery.
Just over a month earlier, Alex had created a box office miracle with Death Note.
More than six billion.
Almost twice the current domestic box office record holder.
And the most absurd part was that this figure belonged only to the second part. Added together with the first part, the total directly surpassed ten billion.
The only pity was that Death Note had not been classified within the domestic film category.
Perhaps precisely because he had been stimulated by Death Note's box office, Stephen Chow publicly announced that his new comedy was aiming for four billion.
When Alex heard that from the reporters, he was speechless.
In his previous life, if he remembered correctly, Stephen Chow had only talked about three billion. This time, he had jumped straight to four.
That was no longer confidence. That was swelling.
But thinking about it carefully, perhaps it was understandable.
If a young man like Alex could make six billion, why could Stephen Chow, practically half the history of domestic comedy films, not make four?
Besides, originally, the all-time box office record should have been broken by a military action blockbuster. But because Alex had stolen all the market's attention, that film had ended up falling slightly short.
As a result, Stephen Chow still held the record.
So he had inflated a little.
Just a little.
The kind of "little" that contained an entire universe compressed onto the tip of a finger.
"I wish Stephen Chow success in reaching that goal."
Alex forced a smile.
He vaguely remembered that, in his previous life, that film had earned something around four or five hundred million.
Reality had slapped Stephen Chow so hard his face had practically swollen.
After all, the marketing campaign based on the idea that "everyone owes Stephen Chow a movie ticket" had already been used once. Repeating the same trick did not mean it would work again.
"In your opinion, among these three films, which one will become the winner of the holiday season?"
Another reporter asked.
Alex fell silent for a second.
Winner?
Winner, my ass.
This was just chickens pecking at each other in an abandoned yard.
A month passed.
Stephen Chow's new comedy closed with 540 million at the box office.
Fortress City ended with 120 million.
The stand-up duo's comedy made 140 million.
Incidentally, Stephen Chow's new comedy earned 270 million on the first day alone. That proved he still had box office appeal.
The problem was that the first day alone accounted for half of the total box office.
That was impressive in a very negative way.
As for Fortress City, according to rumors, it had cost 360 million to produce. Under normal circumstances, a film needed to make at least three times its cost before it could start breaking even.
Fortress City, however, achieved a reverse miracle: its budget was three times higher than its box office.
As for the last film…
Heh.
It was a production starring a pair of comedians. Did anyone really think they needed to buy a ticket to watch that lesson in embarrassment?
The internet exploded.
What kind of garbage was that?
It was the holiday. People only wanted to watch a decent movie. Did they really have to be gifted with this?
Were they trying to curse everyone's entire year?
"I worked all year just to go to the movies in peace. Everyone says the domestic film market is like panning for gold in a pile of trash. Well, I dug and dug and dug, and I didn't see a single grain of gold!"
"Stephen Chow is really done. I already thought the jokes in his last movie were forced. This one feels like the work of someone who completely ran out of tricks."
"As someone who has served, let me say this: if a guy showed up in the military with that pop idol haircut, the sergeant giving him two slaps would be mercy."
"That 'fire at me' scene was practically an insult to everyone who actually gave their lives."
"Can these comedians stop destroying the film industry? Do they have no idea what level their acting is at?"
"Where's Alex? Where's Alex? Someone save us!"
"Alex, you bastard! Hurry up and make another movie! As long as you release something that can be shown in theaters here, I'll watch it at least three times!"
During that holiday season dominated by bad films, countless movie fans once again remembered the man who had created a miracle.
At the same time, One Punch Man finally entered its final stage of filming.
Alex, playing Saitama, was acting opposite the actor playing Boros.
At first, he almost called the man by the name of an old villain the actor had once played, simply because that role had remained glued to his memory.
The veteran martial arts actor, when he received Alex's invitation, had reacted almost like Will before him. He was so excited he could barely sleep for weeks.
After all, he was an action actor past his peak. Perhaps this was his chance to experience a second spring in his career.
But once filming began, the man did not know whether to laugh or cry.
Because Boros simply did not have a face.
The face, the body, the skin - everything would be built with special effects.
In practice, he was a combination of voice actor, physical performer, and motion-capture actor.
Still, there was not much to complain about.
In the future, at least, his résumé would gain one powerful line: he had played the main villain in one of Alex's works.
"Cut! Good!"
Alex clapped, encouraging the crew.
"Everyone worked hard. If nothing goes wrong, hold on for one more month and we should be able to wrap."
The crew answered weakly.
After production truly began, everyone realized the difficulty was far from normal.
Alex was filming this series with cinematic standards.
Scarlett had even joked that she felt as though she were still trapped inside a billion-dollar superhero production.
Ring, ring, ring.
Before Alex could relax for a moment with any of the beautiful actresses on set, his phone suddenly rang.
No.
Thinking about it, there were no actresses left on set anymore.
The first season of One Punch Man did not have many female roles to begin with.
Violet Grant, who played Tornado, had already returned to school. Emily, who played Blizzard, and Scarlett, who played Mosquito Girl, had also left for other commitments.
Now, basically, Alex was surrounded by men in fight scenes.
"Well, Mr. Hayes, to what do I owe the honor?"
Alex answered the phone.
"Kid, when are you going to make a move?"
Just from the tone of his voice, it was obvious the old man was in a terrible mood.
And no wonder.
The performance of domestic cinema that holiday had been humiliating.
The man was waiting for Alex to step in and save the situation.
"Mr. Hayes, I really can't right now. In my case… the earliest possible release would be the October holiday."
Alex rubbed his temples.
He had already guessed exactly what the other side wanted.
___________________________________________________________________________________
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