Owen looked over at Jenna. She was wearing one of his white shirts, far too big for her, falling almost to her knees. The sleeves were carelessly rolled up to her forearms.
Jenna walked over to his chair and stopped beside him, leaning slightly to look at the laptop, "Are you finished?" she asked.
Owen raised an eyebrow, "Why do you say that like I've been working?" he replied.
His voice sounded slightly offended. It was already past midnight.
They had been home for hours, and it wasn't as if he had walked into the office announcing that he had work to finish or asking her not to bother him.
Jenna looked at him for a few seconds, "Owen, when you lock yourself in this office for more than an hour after the day is over, I know perfectly well you're getting ahead on some work," she said.
She paused briefly and added, "I seriously doubt you've been locked in here for an hour watching YouTube videos."
Owen fell silent.
So did Jenna.
The two of them stared at each other.
Finally, Owen nodded slowly, "Good point."
In reality, he had only tried to fake a little indignation. Because Jenna was right.
If he had simply wanted to relax, he probably would have been in the living room with her.
Not locked in here.
"Yes, I'm finished," Owen admitted.
Jenna smiled faintly.
Then she settled herself on top of him, sitting astride his lap and resting both hands on his shoulders.
She wasn't even looking at the computer anymore.
Only at him.
"What were you looking over?" Jenna asked, gently running one hand along his face.
Owen rested his hands on her waist.
"Some Chronicle stuff. The shoot is going to be pretty intense with all the wires and cranes," Owen replied.
There were several flying scenes.
That meant he and the actors who played Mark and Steve would spend quite a bit of time suspended by harnesses, wires, and mechanical rigs that would later disappear in post-production.
It wasn't exactly the kind of shoot Owen had done before in this new life.
"But I finished with that a while ago," he continued, a smile forming on his face, "Now I was looking at the comments on the latest video. It's doing really well. It's going to pass ten million views before it hits twenty-four hours."
"That's incredible," Jenna said, nodding with genuine surprise.
She knew Owen's channel very well. She had appeared in several videos. She had even ended up acting as the camerawoman more than once.
But that video was different. During the first few minutes, Owen had simply shown the new offices and explained how a film production company worked.
Then came the announcements. Projects that, in many cases, were still almost a year away from being released.
Normally, the general public didn't really start becoming interested in a movie until there were only a few months left.
A trailer, maybe a poster.
A marketing campaign already starting to appear everywhere.
Before that, most people didn't even know the project existed.
Owen had found a way for the public to find out much earlier.
Chronicle had only been in pre-production for about four weeks, and people already knew about it, its title, its synopsis, and the confirmation that Matt would direct and Owen would play the main protagonist.
Curry's movie didn't even have a title yet. All they knew was that it would be horror, that he would write and direct it, and that it would arrive in October 2024.
Even so, there were already people waiting for it.
The same thing was happening with the two mysterious scripts. No title, no synopsis, nothing. Now the comments on the video, Twitter, and Reddit were full of theories and discussions.
That was what surprised Jenna. It was an informational video, yet it was exploding.
It had nothing to envy from the impact and views of festival vlogs or short films.
"There's already a huge amount of people talking about our sketch," Jenna commented, looking at him with a mixture of amusement and nervousness, "I'm a little nervous."
It was, after all, the closest announcement: October 13.
Only a few days remained, and for Jenna it would be something new.
She had done movies, series, and far more demanding scenes.
But she had never really taken part in a short sketch made for Instagram.
It was acting, yes. Just condensed into less than three minutes.
"Don't worry. It's going to turn out well," Owen said confidently, "Besides, even if we'd made the worst sketch possible and given the worst performances of our lives, it would probably still go viral."
"That doesn't reassure me at all," Jenna said, narrowing her eyes.
"Why?"
"Because then we'd go viral for doing something terrible," Jenna replied.
Owen laughed, "But we've already seen the result. We didn't make something bad. Besides, we have Jon Bernthal. Another guarantee of success. No one's going to expect that collaboration."
That Jon Bernthal.
Shane from The Walking Dead.
Frank Castle in The Punisher.
Someone absolutely nobody expected to suddenly appear in an Instagram sketch starring Owen and Jenna.
Jenna smiled at the thought and, in a way, that also reassured her a little.
If Jon Bernthal had agreed to take part in a comedy sketch for Instagram, it was because something he had read had struck him as funny.
Besides, the script worked.
She and Owen had good chemistry on screen.
Owen had already shown with Tell Me Why that he understood pretty well how to make comedy work in such a short format.
"I still don't know how you managed to get Jon to agree to be in the sketch..." Jenna commented, looking at him with equal parts amusement and pride.
Owen smiled smugly, "I'm charming."
In reality, it had been much simpler than it might have seemed.
It had all started with Chronicle.
Owen and Matt had chosen Jon Bernthal to play Richard Detmer, Andrew's father.
In the original version of the script, Richard appeared very little.
Around five minutes in the entire movie and, on top of that, he functioned in a fairly straightforward way.
The abusive father.
An unpleasant presence who ended up blaming Andrew when his wife finally died.
Owen and Matt weren't completely satisfied with that. It felt too simple to them. So they expanded the character.
The new version of Chronicle ended up running around 111 minutes, considerably longer than the original story.
A good portion of that extra time went precisely toward Andrew, his mother, and Richard.
Richard would now have around fifteen minutes of screen time.
He was still intimidating and treated Andrew badly, but he was no longer simply an unpleasant man placed there for the audience to hate.
He would show exhaustion, shame, suppressed affection, and moments of vulnerability beside his sick wife.
It didn't make him innocent, only more complex. It also made the role considerably more appealing to an actor.
That was when Owen and Matt thought of Jon. He had presence. But he also knew how to convey weariness, guilt, and vulnerability.
They thought he was perfect. There was no audition. Owen sent the offer directly.
Jon found the role interesting, and it also helped that Chronicle wasn't exactly a small production.
With a budget of 30 million dollars, they could afford to pay for a recognizable name.
The deal ended up closing at approximately: $800,000
Owen had to admit that one had hurt a little.
They could have hired a much lesser-known actor for a much lower salary.
But Jon brought several things at the same time: solid acting, prestige for the cast, so it wasn't just Owen, and a recognizable name for marketing.
That was how the other collaboration had come about.
For the sketch, they needed someone to play a gruff neighbor who ended up getting dragged into the argument between Owen and Jenna's characters.
So Owen thought of Jon. Filming that part took less than an hour.
Jon agreed to read the script. He found it funny and ended up saying yes.
He didn't even ask for any additional payment for appearing.
His agent asked that his Instagram account be mentioned and tagged when they posted the video. Something perfectly reasonable. Especially considering the kind of reach it could have.
Owen had more than twenty-four million followers, and his previous sketch had surpassed seventy million views.
A simple collaboration could send a huge amount of traffic toward Jon's profile.
In the end, everyone benefited.
"I know you're charming," Jenna said as she slowly brought her face closer to his.
She stopped just a few centimeters from his lips. Then she lowered her voice and added in a teasing whisper, "What worries me is that you're too charming with men."
Owen made a face, though he didn't pull away, "That's not what I meant."
Jenna laughed softly. A moment later, she closed the remaining distance and kissed him.
They stayed like that for several seconds.
When she finally pulled back, Jenna slowly caught her breath without moving too far away, "And it'll come out on Friday the thirteenth. Everyone's expecting something horror-related and instead they're going to find us having a couple's argument that gets completely out of control."
"Yeah, it was a coincidence that I scheduled it for that day. At first I didn't even realize it," Owen said, amused.
Now, looking at it from the outside, it was almost impossible to believe it had been accidental.
"How did Lights Out do on Monday? Did they send you any box office numbers?" Jenna asked.
"Preliminary numbers of around twelve million worldwide. We've already passed one hundred million. Matt's going to lose his mind when he finds out tomorrow," Owen replied with a smile.
Over the three days of the weekend, the movie had averaged around thirty-one million dollars per day worldwide.
On Monday, naturally, the number had dropped.
Twelve million.
Much less than during opening weekend, but it also hadn't suffered a particularly worrying drop for its first weekday.
Everyone knew Lights Out would pass one hundred million. But knowing it was going to happen and finally seeing the number were two different things.
The estimates had said one or two days after the weekend. In the end, it had only needed one.
"That's great, and it's good that it won't have much competition. At least during the first few weeks," Jenna commented.
Owen nodded.
That year, the commercial horror calendar for October was considerably less crowded than usual.
There were only two major releases left with real weight behind them.
The Exorcist: Believer, from Universal and Blumhouse, on October 20.
One week later: Five Nights at Freddy's, also under Universal and Blumhouse, on the 27th.
Owen found it pretty curious that all three major horror releases of the month were connected to Universal.
Lights Out was being distributed by them, while the other two were directly produced alongside Blumhouse.
The previous year had had a lot more variety:
Halloween Ends.
Terrifier 2.
Pearl.
Paranormal Activity.
Smile.
Barbarian.
More titles competing for the same audience.
This time, Lights Out had practically two full weeks without competition before running into another major release.
There was only one that genuinely worried Owen.
Five Nights at Freddy's.
The franchise was enormous, with years of video games and a massive community of millions of fans who had been waiting for an adaptation for a long time.
That one really could turn into a phenomenon and pull away a significant portion of the audience.
The Exorcist: Believer, on the other hand, didn't worry him much, commercially speaking of course, as a rival to his movie.
"Do we watch The Sandman? We left off on episode four," Jenna asked.
The Sandman was a dark fantasy, drama, and horror Netflix series they had started watching a few days earlier.
It was based on the acclaimed comic book of the same name created by Neil Gaiman and published by DC Comics.
The story followed Morpheus, the personification of dreams and one of the seven siblings known as the Endless.
Owen leaned slightly to one side to check the time on the laptop, "I don't know... it's late. I have to get up early tomorrow," he replied.
Jenna turned her head a little and looked at the screen too, "It's not late. There's still more than half an hour until one. The episode is forty-five minutes long."
Owen remained thoughtful. The next day he had to be at the offices around eight, and it wasn't exactly an ordinary day.
At nine, the first candidate of the day would arrive for the final stage of casting for Steve and Mark.
"Come on," Jenna insisted when she noticed he was already about to give in. "I'll make tea and then..."
Her voice lowered as she slowly moved closer to his lips again, "I'll reward you in bed..."
Owen looked at her. He didn't even need to think about it, "Let's watch The Sandman."
The truth was, he had already been about to say yes. He wanted to continue the series.
He didn't like starting something, letting too many days pass, and then having to remember who was who or what had happened in the previous episode.
Besides, he had liked the first few episodes and, more than anything, he wanted to watch it with Jenna.
After all, it had been his fault for locking himself in the office for more than an hour to get ahead on work when he could have been relaxing with her instead.
Jenna laughed softly and looked at him with obvious satisfaction.
They both got up from the chair and left the room.
The next day, Owen headed to the Second Take Films offices. He had slept about six hours. It wasn't ideal, but it wasn't a disaster either.
Chronicle's pre-production was considerably further along than that of the other 2024 projects.
Owen hadn't waited for Second Take's entire new structure to be up and running before getting it moving.
With this movie, he was directly involved as a producer, just as he had been with Good Will Hunting.
He had already hired other producers, because a movie of that size didn't work with a single person handling everything.
The budget was set. So was the shooting plan. Around 57 days. The main locations were already being lined up.
Matt had been hired as director a long time ago. Most of the important technical crew was already locked in.
At that point, the most important thing still left to resolve was the casting.
Andrew's parents were already set. Jon as the father and Katheryn Winnick as Andrew's mother.
Lagertha herself from Vikings.
Katheryn was forty-five years old and found herself at a fairly particular point in her career.
Vikings had ended quite some time ago, but Lagertha was still, by far, the character that had made her internationally recognizable as an actress.
On top of that, she had just finished starring in Big Sky for three seasons. The third had ended in January of that same year and ABC had canceled the series in May.
That meant that, by then, Katheryn had much more freedom to commit to a movie.
She wasn't a top-tier movie star. But she wasn't simply another supporting actress either.
She had name recognition, experience, and brought a considerable amount of prestige to the cast.
With Jon and Katheryn, Chronicle's adult cast was considerably stronger than the one Owen remembered from his previous life.
Besides, visually they worked very well as Andrew's parents.
Jon had dark hair and dark eyes.
Katheryn was blonde, with light blue eyes.
Owen had dark hair and light eyes.
It was easy to look at the three of them together and believe they belonged to the same family.
Katheryn also seemed genuinely interested in the character. When Owen and Matt spoke with her and explained the character, she had reacted with quite a bit of enthusiasm.
The public mostly associated her with physically strong characters.
Karen was practically the opposite. A woman consumed by a terminal illness. No action scenes.
That was precisely why the role appealed to her. It also helped that, before approaching her, the part had already been expanded.
In this version, Karen would have around nine minutes of screen time.
She would no longer simply be the sick mother who appeared briefly, coughed, and then died. She would have around six scenes spread throughout the movie with her son and husband.
Enough for the audience to better understand who she was, what kind of relationship she had with them, and what place she occupied in their lives.
That way, when she finally died, she wouldn't just be an element used to push Andrew even further down.
The audience would have spent time with her. They would have seen her relationship with Andrew and understood why losing her devastated him so much.
Otherwise, Owen doubted Katheryn would have accepted.
At least not without asking for a disproportionate amount of money for such a small role, and Owen had no intention of hiring well-known actors just so he could put their names on the poster.
If he was going to pay them well, he wanted to use them.
Katheryn hadn't been cheap either: $600,000. A week and a half of filming.
A little less than Jon. But, to Owen, it was worth it.
Between the two of them, Andrew's parents stopped feeling like simple narrative functions.
Now they could become real characters.
The two genuinely important characters still left to cast were Mark and Steve.
Both had much more relevance to the story and considerably more screen time than Andrew's parents.
In practice, they were co-leads.
The casting process was already fairly advanced. They weren't reviewing hundreds of auditions or holding an open first round.
For Mark, they had narrowed the list down to four candidates.
For Steve, five.
That Tuesday, October 10, would be devoted entirely to Mark. An in-person casting session with scene readings and, above all, chemistry tests with Owen.
The schedule was as follows:
9:00–10:15 — Jaeden Martell
Jaeden was twenty years old and had been working since he was a child. He had drawn quite a bit of attention in St. Vincent and Midnight Special, as well as starring in the miniseries Defending Jacob.
10:30–11:45 — Cooper Hoffman
Twenty years old.
His career was much shorter, but he had debuted directly as the lead in Licorice Pizza, where he had shown a tremendous amount of charisma despite having practically no prior experience in front of a professional camera.
This could partly be because he was technically considered a nepo baby. He was the son of the legendary late Oscar-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman and costume designer Mimi O'Donnell.
12:00–13:15 — Xolo Maridueña
Twenty-two years old.
He was known mainly for Cobra Kai and had just starred in DC's Blue Beetle, released in August of that year, although it had performed fairly or very poorly at the box office. He had plenty of experience playing young characters, natural charisma, and, on top of that, more physical experience than the other candidates.
13:15–14:15 — Lunch and internal discussion
One hour to review the first three tests, compare impressions, and prepare for the final session.
14:30–15:45 — Percy Hynes White
Twenty-two years old.
He had spent several years working in television and had recently gained quite a bit of visibility thanks to Wednesday. He had gone through an online cancellation that resulted in Netflix removing him from season two of Wednesday.
Months had passed since that cancellation, there was no evidence, and the users who had created the thread accusing him of sexual harassment had deleted their accounts, which strongly suggested that the accusations had been false.
From a legal and journalistic standpoint, the conclusion was that it had been a fabricated internet case. Although the damage had already been done, since he had been hurt professionally by losing the role that had cemented his global stardom in the most-watched English-language series in Netflix history.
After seeing all four and, especially, testing how they worked alongside Owen, the idea was to narrow down the list.
To three, or directly to two. They didn't need to choose the winner that same day.
The following day, October 11, they would repeat practically the same process with Steve.
Five candidates.
Rudy Pankow.
Twenty-five years old and one of the most recognizable faces from Outer Banks. He had a lot of energy, charisma, and a natural ease when it came to playing the extroverted guy, which could fit Steve quite well.
Caleb McLaughlin.
Twenty-two years old.
In that world, Stranger Things didn't exist, so his fame was considerably smaller than what Owen remembered from his previous life.
But Owen already knew him.
He had hired him for Good Will Hunting as one of Will's friends.
They weren't close, but they got along well and, more importantly, they had already shown that they could have believable chemistry as friends on camera.
That gave him a slight advantage.
Froy Gutierrez.
Twenty-five years old.
He had worked on series such as Teen Wolf and Cruel Summer. He had a fairly clean and charismatic image, but he could easily shift into something more serious when the scene required it.
Charlie Bushnell.
Nineteen years old.
Much less well known than several of the other candidates. Most of his experience came from television, especially Diary of a Future President. He was a younger option with considerably less experience, but that didn't necessarily work against him either.
Lastly:
Chosen Jacobs.
Twenty-two years old.
He had been working since he was a teenager and had experience in both drama and television, including Castle Rock and God Friended Me. He had a presence that could work very well for Steve.
But that would be the next day's problem.
Today was about Mark.
Owen entered the spacious casting room while mentally reviewing the schedule.
Matt was already there. He had a script in one hand and was speaking with quite a bit of energy, gesturing as he explained something.
Across from him was the casting director, a thirty-two-year-old woman who listened to him much more calmly, clearly already accustomed to the way Matt expressed himself.
Off to one side, one of the producers remained seated, following the conversation in silence.
All three turned their heads when they saw Owen walk in.
'Good... Let's start the day,' Owen thought.
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