'What the hell...?' Owen thought, completely frozen in place as a massive number of questions began forming in his mind.
The first mystery was: why were Gaten and Caleb there?
While it wasn't entirely surprising that they might stop by from time to time to say hello, after all, they were friends of his, Matt, Tyler, and Eric, the current scene went a step further.
They were there with complete ease, integrated as if they were just another part of the company, as if they were actively working on a Second Take Films project.
Joe seemed close to Gaten, Matt, and the others. The same went for Sadie.
When exactly had that happened?
Both of them had signed their contracts only last week, and they had only started coming into the office for rehearsals on Monday.
Only two full days had passed. This was barely the third.
Owen knew that people from different projects could run into each other in common areas during lunch breaks or downtime, but the level of familiarity they were displaying was far too high for just two and a half days.
Gaten and Caleb weren't even part of the Black Mirror cast, which meant they had met Sadie and Joe sometime between Monday and Tuesday.
The same applied to Matt, Eric, and Tyler.
'I have practically fifty percent of the main Stranger Things cast gathered in my studio, playing ping-pong and betting money,' Owen thought, a strange expression crossing his face.
The irony of the situation was hard to ignore.
The series didn't even exist. These kids had never spent years sharing a filming set together. And yet, only a few days were enough for them to develop remarkable natural chemistry.
As if there were some spontaneous understanding between them.
Eric, who had just lost the match, continued grumbling under his breath while Tyler, his longtime rival, wasted no opportunity to mock him.
"Hey, shut up! You lost to her too!" Eric shot back, pointing at him with his paddle and desperately trying to salvage his pride as everyone around them laughed.
Amid the commotion, Matt turned his head and spotted Owen standing several feet away, watching everything unfold. A wide grin spread across his face the moment he recognized him.
"Look who finally remembered he works here!" Matt called out, weaving through the crowd while extending an arm in one smooth motion.
Owen mirrored the gesture. Their palms met with a sharp smack before immediately locking into a firm handshake.
"I never stopped working," Owen replied with a faint smile.
Around them, heads immediately began turning as everyone realized the boss had just arrived.
Eric, Tyler, Gaten, and Caleb were the first to move, surrounding him with the confidence of close friends.
Behind them, the rest of the group began drifting away from the ping-pong table to greet him as well. Though they didn't approach with quite the same familiarity, the enthusiasm on their faces was obvious. It had genuinely felt strange not having him in the building during those days, even if there had only been a few of them.
Among those approaching were members of the team handling the post-production of Lights Out.
They had known Owen for months and had spent long hours with him in the editing room.
Mixed in with them were members of the pre-production team working on the new Black Mirror episodes.
Sadie and Joe stepped forward as well to greet him.
Sadie had interacted with Owen a little more. Not much, but enough to know that he was polite, highly professional during the chemistry tests, and not arrogant in the slightest.
Joe, on the other hand, stayed a step behind, carrying himself with a more reserved and respectful attitude.
"Right, because working means going to New York with your girlfriend to watch one of the most anticipated movies of the year," Eric remarked with a crooked grin, crossing his arms.
"I filmed a vlog and did some networking," Owen replied.
The trip had served as a much-needed mini-vacation. The truth was that holding the camera, thinking about framing, and planning what to say to his audience had still required a certain amount of mental structure, even if it hadn't been particularly difficult.
As for the networking, he might have been exaggerating a little, but the premiere's after-party had definitely paid off.
"The picture with Tony Stark!" Gaten immediately exclaimed upon hearing the word networking.
The post Owen had uploaded the day before instantly came to mind, already accumulating an enormous number of likes.
In the final photos of the post, he was standing alongside Robert Downey Jr.
In the first one, they looked like two mob bosses closing a secret state-level deal, while in the next they were simply fooling around, recreating the famous "This is cinema" meme.
Caleb snapped his fingers.
"So what's the real context behind that photo, man?" he asked with genuine curiosity. "Everyone's losing their minds over it."
"Are you two making a movie together? Does it have something to do with the superhero film?" Tyler chimed in, connecting the dots in his head as he recalled the conspiracy theories that had already flooded Twitter since yesterday afternoon.
Matt couldn't help laughing as he remembered Owen's statement to the press, which had already generated dozens of headlines and forum debates.
Matt knew perfectly well that Owen had been referring to Chronicle, his "revenge" for not landing the Superman role, though it wasn't really about revenge so much as finally getting the chance to star in a superhero story.
Thanks to that subtle mention on the red carpet, Matt had gained a wave of new followers across his social media accounts.
Sadie, Joe, and the rest of the employees nearby perked up their ears, practically holding their breath as they waited for Owen's answer.
It was a strange experience to process the fact that this twenty-one-year-old who had hired them already moved so comfortably among Hollywood's heavyweights.
Then again, when considering the cultural and historical impact of Good Will Hunting and the meteoric rise of Second Take Films, that reality no longer seemed quite so unbelievable.
"Yes," Owen began in a serious tone, "Robert is going to star in my next movie. I'll have to pay him a twenty-million-dollar salary, but it'll be worth every penny."
At those words, Gaten's eyes widened dramatically.
"That's incredible! If Iron Man comes back to superhero movies, the entire genre is going to come back to life overnight!"
Robert Downey Jr. had said goodbye to Marvel in 2019, stepping away from cinematic superhero universes following the conclusion of Endgame.
Since his departure, however, both Marvel and DC had entered a noticeable decline. While there had been a handful of isolated successes, box office disappointments were steadily winning the battle.
If Owen somehow managed to bring him back to the genre, it would be huge news.
Owen, Matt, and everyone else present stared at him in silence.
Noticing this, Gaten quickly lost his enthusiasm. He narrowed his eyes suspiciously, "That was sarcasm... right?"
"Of course it was sarcasm," Sadie cut in, smiling in amusement as she shook her head.
Matt grinned, "I'd be terrified if I had to direct Robert Downey Jr. on my third movie."
"I'd have a nervous breakdown if I had to sign a check for more than twenty million dollars on my third movie," Owen replied, prompting a wave of laughter.
Even though GWH's box office run would earn him a fortune, Owen had absolutely no intention of throwing away twenty million dollars on a single salary.
"It was just a photo. You'll get the full context in the vlog, but there's no secret deal, and you won't be seeing us together in my next movie," Owen finally clarified.
Matt, who already knew that, glanced at his watch and clapped his hands twice.
"Alright, people, break's over! Everybody back to the editing room!" he announced loudly, cutting through the commotion.
Tyler, Eric, and the rest of the post-production team let out a collective groan of exaggerated reluctance, but they started making their way back nonetheless, waving goodbye to Owen and the others with subtle hand gestures.
At the same time, several other employees exchanged a few words among themselves and headed toward the neighboring rooms.
Within seconds, the noise in the common area died down considerably.
Owen turned with a grin, fixing his gaze on Gaten and Caleb, who had remained behind and very clearly had no actual work to do there.
"And you two? What are you doing here?" Owen asked.
"We're actors," Gaten replied, raising both hands in a completely carefree gesture. "When you're not filming, you remember you have an alarming amount of free time."
Caleb nodded with a smile, "We just stopped by to say hi, grab something to eat, and play some ping-pong."
"Just so we're clear, we paid for our lunch," Gaten added, just in case. He didn't want them to be seen as freeloading friends.
They were still up-and-coming actors.
Thanks to the colossal success of GWH, where they played Will's neighborhood friends, they had gained massive visibility and a huge boost to their résumés.
Those supporting roles, while they didn't enjoy the same amount of screen time as more prominent supporting characters like those played by Jacob or Emma, had earned them an enviable level of prestige, market value, and fan following.
However, since they weren't Tier-A stars with schedules packed full of photoshoots, interviews, and similar obligations, their free days were genuine wastelands of spare time.
Owen chatted with them for a little while longer, arranging a casual dinner for that evening with Matt and the others before the two finally said their goodbyes and left the offices.
Afterward, he set off toward the rehearsal room to begin work on San Junipero.
Kogonada, the meticulous director in charge of the episode, was already waiting for him.
As he turned around, he noticed Sadie still leaning against the wall with her arms crossed. She had been patiently waiting for him to finish his conversation with Gaten and Caleb.
"Hey," Owen greeted with a subtle nod. "Ready?"
Sadie nodded quietly, pushing herself off the wall with ease. The two began walking side by side toward the room where Kogonada and the rest of the team were waiting.
"So, how were these first two days of rehearsals?" Owen asked casually as they made their way down the hallway.
"Intense. Very intense," Sadie replied with a soft sigh. "It was only two days, but it felt like two full weeks of rehearsals."
Owen gave her a knowing smile, "Kogonada can be a little demanding."
"A little?" Sadie shot back, raising an eyebrow as if that word fell far short of accurately describing the director's meticulousness.
"Alright, very demanding," Owen corrected himself.
Owen had worked with Derek, a director who was both respected and highly regarded within the industry.
Sadie, meanwhile, had recently appeared in a prestigious dramatic film like The Whale, so she wasn't exactly unfamiliar with demanding creative environments either.
If both of them agreed that Kogonada was intense and demanding, then he truly was.
Although no one besides Owen knew it in this reality, the San Junipero script was the work that had undergone the most significant transformation since his arrival in this world.
When he improved the Paranormal Activity script, he had focused solely on polishing the pacing, increasing the psychological tension, and optimizing the impact moments.
With The Spectacular Now, the screenplay he had sold to A24, he had tried to interfere as little as possible. More than anything, he had used it as a practical exercise in translating a story into screenplay form while increasing his reputation as a writer in this world.
As for Good Will Hunting, he hadn't touched a single aspect of its core structure.
He considered it a masterpiece. There was a reason it had won the Academy Award in his previous world, and he knew his current screenwriting abilities were far too inexperienced to attempt improving a script of that caliber.
The only thing he had done was modernize the technological setting to avoid the additional millions of dollars it would have cost to set the film in 1998.
In other words, no major narrative changes had been made in any of his previous three projects.
Until now.
San Junipero was the first script in which he had decided to implement a fairly drastic structural change.
The original character of Yorkie, a shy and withdrawn young woman, had been completely reimagined as a young man named Mike.
The primary motivation behind the change was purely practical: Owen wanted to act in the very series he was financing and producing.
As a result, the story's dynamic had shifted entirely into a heterosexual romance.
Since the original work didn't exist in this timeline, there would be no negative backlash, social media debates, or accusations of censoring LGBT themes.
However, changing the gender of one of the protagonists had required Owen to undertake an extensive rewriting process, forcing him to rebuild weak spots, reformulate dialogue, and adjust the psychological nuances of the characters in ways he had never done before.
Because this rewrite was genuinely his own work, not a near-identical transcription from his previous life, it wasn't nearly as airtight or polished.
It wasn't like Good Will Hunting or the other Black Mirror episodes, where the source material was so strong that directors practically didn't dare change a single comma.
In Hollywood, the overwhelming majority of directors do not film scripts they wrote themselves.
But that does not mean they accept a screenplay blindly.
They read it thoroughly, analyze every page, and send back detailed notes for the screenwriter to implement changes. Sometimes they even co-write sections or sit down together to polish the structure word by word.
Some make only minor adjustments.
Others practically deconstruct the entire screenplay and rebuild it to suit their own vision.
Kogonada belonged to the second category, though not to the extent of wanting to completely reinvent San Junipero. He loved the episode's core premise.
However, the seams in the sections Owen had been forced to rewrite himself quickly revealed themselves under the director's scrutiny.
Mike's backstory felt noticeably weaker and less refined compared to the brilliance of the rest of the script, and Kogonada spotted it immediately.
As a result, the screenplay had to go through several rounds of rewrites: back-and-forth notes, the removal of entire scenes, and the addition of completely new sequences to give the character more weight.
For Owen, serving as the active screenwriter under these circumstances was a genuine headache. He had to invest an enormous amount of time and effort to satisfy Kogonada's standards.
On more than one occasion, Owen found himself on the verge of frustration, unusual for him, leading to friction and intense debates that were an inevitable part of any creative process. Fortunately, they always managed to resolve their disagreements professionally.
Owen and Sadie entered the rehearsal room.
Kogonada greeted Owen with a brief nod and immediately seated him to begin an exhaustive script read-through.
Even though Owen was the creator and remembered every line perfectly, they still analyzed the screenplay line by line, with the director meticulously explaining dialogue timing and breaking down the subtext behind every word.
Meanwhile, the rest of the technical team took charge of Sadie for wardrobe tests.
Since the story of San Junipero takes place across different virtual timelines, recreating the aesthetics of the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, she had to undergo a constant rotation of outfits, hairstyles, and makeup to capture the essence of each era.
Once the technical tests were complete, it was finally time for the joint rehearsal.
Kogonada positioned them in the center of the room, seated directly across from one another in two individual chairs, with absolutely nothing between them and only inches separating them.
"Drop your shoulders, avoid direct eye contact, and project pathological shyness. We need to strip away your superstar energy for this role," Kogonada instructed, standing off to the side with the script in one hand.
"Superstar energy?" Owen repeated, raising an eyebrow with a hint of offense in his voice.
Sadie couldn't help smiling mischievously as she settled into her chair.
"You have to admit it, Owen. I watched the Oppenheimer red carpet clips yesterday. The way you handled reporters and casually dropped exclusives... you have a presence. I'd call it... dominant."
Kogonada nodded while studying Owen with his analytical gaze.
"Making that confidence disappear completely and replacing it with the vulnerability Mike requires is going to be a real challenge. But I saw you in Good Will Hunting. You managed to show a vulnerable side of Will. Not this specific kind of vulnerability, but you demonstrated a broad dramatic range."
He paused briefly before concluding, "So I'm confident you'll pull it off."
Owen hadn't expected the compliment. He smiled, "Thanks. That means a lot coming from you."
True to form, Kogonada didn't linger on the sentiment. With his usual flat, professional tone, he simply tapped the script against his free palm.
"Page twelve," he said dryly, pointing at the screenplay. "Let's begin."
Chuckling at how quickly the director had cut the moment short, Sadie flipped open her script.
Owen did the same, and the hours slipped by.
It wasn't until around 7:00 PM that Kogonada finally called an end to the rehearsal.
The exact moment the final line hung in the air, Sadie collapsed back into her chair and let out a long sigh.
"Good work," Kogonada announced.
Without wasting a second, he headed off to review the photographs and test shots the technical team had taken of the wardrobe and makeup earlier that day.
He wanted to examine how Sadie's red hair and pale complexion reacted under the highly saturated neon lighting he planned to use for the virtual 1980s simulation.
Owen watched him leave before turning toward Sadie, "You got a 'good work' out of him. Nicely done."
Sadie nodded with a tired but amused expression, "Well... spending more than eight hours inside a studio for a single rehearsal day was worth it. That's definitely a new personal record."
Normally, rehearsal sessions don't extend beyond four or five hours a day in order to avoid exhausting actors before actual filming begins.
However, since Sadie had spent the entire morning handling her individual tests while Owen hadn't joined until shortly after noon, Kogonada had made it his mission to make up for the lost time at all costs.
Owen walked over to a small table in the corner, grabbed a sealed bottle of water, and handed it to her.
While she took a grateful sip, he took the opportunity to clear up the questions that had been bouncing around in his head since arriving at the office.
He wanted to find out how she had ended up playing ping-pong against Eric, and why she already seemed so integrated with Joe, Matt, Gaten, and the rest.
Sadie explained that on Monday, during lunch, Matt had immediately gone out of his way to include them.
Matt was genuinely curious about getting to know the actors who would be starring in the episodes.
One thing led to another, and after lunch everyone had ended up in the recreation area playing ping-pong and pool.
It wasn't as if they had become best friends in a matter of days, but they had good chemistry.
Though she didn't say it explicitly to Owen, Sadie felt extremely comfortable there.
There was a close-knit atmosphere, something very characteristic of independent filmmaking, that felt worlds apart from the cold, impersonal corporate environment of Hollywood's major studios.
She also believed Joe felt the same way. On the first day she had seen him, he seemed tense and somewhat stiff, but now, surrounded by Tyler's, Eric's, and Matt's constant nonsense, he appeared much more relaxed.
"See you tomorrow," Owen said, saying goodbye to Sadie before heading toward his private office.
As he stepped through the door, everything was exactly as he had left it.
While turning on his computer and waiting for the operating system to respond, he leaned back in his chair and let his thoughts wander toward Mike's character structure.
In the original version, Yorkie's paralysis was caused by a car accident after being rejected by her ultra-religious parents when she came out as gay.
Here, Owen had changed the catalyst, transforming it into overwhelming and suffocating academic pressure.
He remembered several documentaries about educational systems in countries like South Korea and Japan.
He knew that some American families could also be highly demanding, though they rarely reached the almost absurd extremes seen in parts of Asia, where children competed fiercely from elementary school onward.
Mike's accident occurred after failing to meet expectations on a crucial exam.
He was driving during a storm while severely sleep-deprived and overwhelmed by stress, leading to the accident that would leave him quadriplegic at the age of twenty-one.
Owen wanted the dynamic between Mike and Kelly, Sadie's outgoing character, to feel different from the original material.
In the original concept, he felt Yorkie possessed an excessive level of submissiveness that didn't quite translate well into a male role, no matter how inexperienced or withdrawn Mike might be.
Instead, Owen modeled the relationship after a very specific dynamic: Charlie and Sam from The Perks of Being a Wallflower.
It was a novel he had read in his first life, whose later film adaptation starred Logan Lerman, Ezra Miller, and none other than his friend Emma Watson.
Since neither the book nor the movie existed in this reality, Owen drew inspiration from Charlie's nuances to shape Mike's personality, aiming to capture that same sweet and innocent sense of companionship alongside Sadie Sink's Kelly.
Unlike the original episode, where the protagonists' bond emerged from explicit physical attraction and strong sexual tension that was resolved rather quickly, Owen removed those impulses from the script.
He preferred subtlety.
He wanted to build a more poetic connection, one that enhanced the digital mysticism of San Junipero.
Of course, that didn't mean the story lacked romance. In fact, there were plenty of intimate moments: kisses, gentle touches, embraces...
With Kogonada finally satisfied with the completed script, Owen was convinced the episode had the potential to surpass the original, resonate more deeply with audiences, and remain memorable for far longer.
At that exact moment, the thread of his thoughts was abruptly interrupted.
Knock. Knock.
"Come in," Owen said immediately, pulling his attention away from the monitor and toward the office door.
The door opened, revealing Matt.
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