The questions Marvin asked hadn't been the questions of a gifted teenager trying to sound older.
They were the questions of someone who already understood where every dollar flowed after a film opened.
Distribution.
Ancillary markets.
International licensing.
Long-term ownership.
He hadn't spoken like a filmmaker chasing one successful picture.
He had spoken like someone quietly assembling the board.
Alan had walked into that meeting expecting to humour an unusually talented kid.
He had walked out wondering whether he'd just negotiated with one of the sharpest man he'd ever met.
That certainty had only grown stronger with every conversation afterward.
Perhaps it was Marvin's unusual charisma.
Perhaps it was the weight of his results.
Whatever the reason, every conversation seemed to leave Alan with fewer doubts than the one before. The logic had always been there. The numbers supported it. Yet each conversation made backing Marvin feel less like a gamble and more like the obvious decision.
Wasn't that how Hollywood had always worked?
One hit became two. Two became ten. Then suddenly every studio in town was chasing the same idea, repainting it, renaming it, convincing themselves it was something new. A successful formula was passed from hand to hand until all life had been squeezed out of it.
Disaster films. Erotic thrillers. High-concept action movies. Teen slashers. Romantic comedies. Every era had its fashion, and Hollywood wore each one until the fabric tore.
Success wasn't copied.
It was repeated, stretched, packaged, and sold again and again until the excitement that had made it special in the first place slowly faded away.
Hollywood didn't merely create trends.
It consumed them.
Studios found a spark, gathered around it, and fed it into the machine until nothing remained but familiar formulas and diminishing returns. Then they moved on, searching for the next spark to repeat the process all over again.
It wasn't creativity that the industry worshipped most.
It was success.
Hollywood rewarded successful pictures. And it rewarded successful people even more.
A movie that made a hundred million dollars was called vision. Two hundred million dollars made it genius. After that, executives stopped asking why it had worked and started asking only one question: How do we make ten more of these? The studios called it trend-chasing.
Wall Street called it pattern recognition.
In truth, they were the same thing.
Both industries searched for signals in chaos. Both believed yesterday's victory could be repeated tomorrow. Both poured money into whatever seemed certain, then abandoned it the moment the numbers changed.
Hollywood sold dreams.
Wall Street sold expectations.
But underneath the different language, they ran on the same instinct: find success, copy success, multiply success.
And Marvin had become something rare. He was both the dream and the pattern. Both Hollywood and Wall Street looked at him and saw the same thing: A proven bet.
One executive still wasn't convinced.
"So we're supposed to trust a fourteen-year-old with a quarter-billion-dollar fantasy trilogy?"
Alan answered calmly. "No."
The room looked at him.
"We're trusting the man he hired."
He let that settle before continuing. "Peter Jackson knows this material better than anyone here."
"And Marvin?"
"He had the sense to recognize that." Alan leaned back. "Most producers spend half their careers looking for directors smart enough to ignore."
A few quiet laughs circled the table. "This isn't about Marvin directing the film."
"It's about Marvin knowing who should."
The room gradually settled.
What Alan didn't say aloud was that this decision reached far beyond a movie or or even *The Lord of the Rings*.
The merger between Time Warner and AOL was approaching. Everyone inside Warner Bros. could feel the ground shifting beneath them.
New leadership. New priorities. New opportunities.
Robert Daly and Terry Semel still occupied the top offices, but nobody expected the political landscape to remain unchanged forever.
Barry Meyer was climbing. Others were positioning themselves.
Alan intended to do the same. If the next decade belonged to creators who could build billion-dollar franchises instead of chasing single hits, then standing beside Marvin early might prove to be the smartest investment of his career.
If the trilogy became the phenomenon Alan believed it could become, nobody in the company would forget who had championed it from the beginning.
And if Marvin continued succeeding... ...keeping Warner Bros. close to him would be worth far more than whatever risk this investment represented today.
Alan looked around the room one last time. "We don't need to own Marvin."
"We need him to remember that Warner Bros. treated him like a partner before everyone else did."
No one argued after that. The discussion shifted from whether they should work with Marvin… ...to how quickly they could make it happen.
—
Jeff slowly lowered the receiver, staring at it for a moment as if it had just delivered the wrong message. When he finally looked up, disbelief was written all over his face.
"Marvin..." he said, still sounding stunned. "Alan Horn just told me Warner Bros. wants to become your strategic partner. They're drafting the agreement now. He said it'll be faxed over shortly."
For a second, the room fell silent.
Jeff shook his head, trying to make sense of it. "Seriously?" A laugh of pure disbelief escaped him. "That's... unbelievable. How did you pull that off? You've met Alan exactly once."
Marvin merely smiled.
It was the kind of smile that answered everything and nothing at all.
He offered no explanation, leaving Jeff to wonder what had been said during that brief meeting that was enough to persuade one of Hollywood's most respected executives to move so quickly.
---
June 20th. Los Angeles.
The California heat vanished the moment they stepped onto the red carpet.
Tonight belonged to *The Others*.
Searchlights swept across Hollywood Boulevard while thousands of fans crowded behind steel barricades, screaming each time another limousine eased to the curb. Camera flashes erupted in relentless waves, bleaching the night white for a heartbeat before darkness reclaimed it.
The premiere wasn't merely for a film. It was another gathering of Hollywood's ruling class.
Inside the El Capitan Theatre, gilded plasterwork, towering crystal chandeliers, and deep crimson velvet drapes glowed beneath carefully positioned premiere lighting. The restored 1920s movie palace looked less like a cinema than a royal ballroom, while thick crimson curtains framed the enormous screen waiting beyond the stage. Ushers moved quietly between rows, guiding guests to their seats as waiters circulated with champagne and crystal glasses.
Conversations drifted through the auditorium in hundreds of overlapping fragments.
Weekend grosses. Awards campaigns. Agency rumors.
Who's directing what? Who's sleeping with whom? Every sentence carried a price tag.
Marvin's gaze wandered across the room.
Hollywood rarely gathered like this unless someone stood to make money.
Near the front of the ballroom, Tom Cruise stood at the centre of a familiar orbit.
Studio executives, producers, directors, and actors drifted toward him almost unconsciously, drawn by the effortless charisma that had made him one of Hollywood's most dependable leading men. His laugh came easily, putting everyone around him at ease while never surrendering control of the conversation.
Only a few feet away, Will Smith had gathered a crowd of his own. Jamie Foxx was in the middle of it, firing off one joke after another. Laughter rippled through the room, loud enough to draw amused glances from nearby executives.
It was a known, unspoken curiosity in the industry that a significant proportion of Cruise's closest Hollywood friends were Black—a demographic he actively cultivated.
For a moment, Marvin ignored the conversations.
Instead, he listened to everything beneath them.
His senses spread through the ballroom like invisible currents, brushing against hundreds of emotions at once.
Excitement. Admiration. Jealousy. Greed. Ambition. Lust.
Hollywood was never short on emotions.
Then...
One emotion caught his attention. Jamie's gaze lingered for the briefest moment.
Not on the photographers. Not on the producers. On Nicole Kidman.
The look lasted less than a heartbeat before another smile erased it.
No one noticed.
Marvin did.
Desire possessed a taste unlike any other. Quiet. Patient. Almost embarrassed by its own existence. It was a lingering, predatory look—a man silently coveting his friend's wife. It rarely announced itself. It simply lingered, hidden behind polite smiles and casual conversation, waiting for an opportunity.
His lips curved ever so slightly. ‘So that's where it began.’
He felt no anger.
Nicole was already his.
Men would look. Men would fantasise. That was simply the price of possessing women beautiful enough to become fantasies. He wasn't about to gouge out someone's eyes over a passing glance.
He was a civilised demon, after all…
Looks like Jamie’s stuck with the other one, but Marvin he'll be on it! As his thoughts drifted briefly to the future.
More than a decade from now, Hollywood would explode with rumors linking Jamie Foxx to Katie Holmes after her divorce from Tom Cruise. Both would deny everything for years, dismissing every headline as tabloid fantasy—until photographs of them kissing passionately on a beach days later, igniting a massive scandal finally surfaced, confirming what the gossip columns had whispered all along.
Cruise would be left shocked beyond belief by the deep betrayal from two people he trusted implicitly.
Whether anything had happened before then hardly mattered.
By that point, Tom Cruise's friendship with Jamie would already be beyond saving.
But tonight, it was just a lingering glance—a seed of lust Marvin’s senses recognized instantly.
Marvin found himself wondering whether betrayal was ever born from a single choice.
Or whether it always began with something far smaller.
A glance held a second too long. A thought entertained instead of discarded. A desire allowed to take root. The future had already answered that question.
There was no reason to dwell on it.
Marvin looked away, letting the memory dissolve as though it had never crossed his mind.
Across the aisle stood another unmistakable circle.
The Australians.
Nicole Kidman occupied its centre almost by accident. She greeted friends with effortless warmth while everyone else naturally drifted toward her.
Russell Crowe carried himself with the solid confidence of a man who always looked ready for a fight.
Hugh Jackman—still years away from becoming Wolverine—spoke with infectious enthusiasm, his excitement untouched by the polish Hollywood would eventually teach him.
Heath Ledger looked impossibly young, slipping from one conversation to the next with restless energy, while Cate Blanchett's effortless elegance somehow made nearly everyone around her seem a little less refined.
Naomi Watts completed the group, speaking only when she had something worth saying, content to listen more than she talked.
No one had organised it. Hollywood was a small town masquerading as a global industry, and the Australian contingent had always looked after its own. Before long, they were all standing in the same corner, talking as if they had never left home.
Talent had a way of finding talent, and sharing the same homeland only made the pull stronger.
Marvin’s gaze had been quietly lingering on Nicole from across the crowded VIP lounge, cutting through the chaos of flashing cameras, champagne laughter, and the glittering noise of the premiere. Just as his eyes were about to finally tear away from her, the electric weight of his stare registered on her skin like a physical touch.
She felt it instantly—warm, possessive, and dangerously familiar. She didn’t even need to look to know exactly who it was. Even at this distance, his presence carried a pull that slid straight down her spine and settled low in her belly, tight and aching.
The invisible tether of his attention was addictively familiar, almost cruel in how easily it made her feel so much. Standing fifty feet away, holding with her tight circle of friends, she kept her posture perfectly poised, chin lifted, smile polished for the cameras. Without interrupting the conversation, she casually glanced around her circle, making certain no one was paying attention.
The second she knew they were in a temporary blind spot, she lifted her head and looked directly at him.
Their eyes locked.
The polite, professional facade she wore for the world melted away in a fraction of a second, replaced by something raw. A wicked, knowing grin curved her full red lips as she gave him a deliberate, slow wink—then sensually sank her teeth into her plush lower lip, dragging it slowly between them.
The action was lightning-fast. Before Marvin could tilt his head, shift his weight, or even fully react, her gaze had already slipped away. She seamlessly snapped her attention back to her friends, burying the fire beneath her flawless, warm public smile as if nothing had happened—leaving him staring at the elegant curve of her figure and the way the gown clung to her body like a second skin.