Superstar From Age 0

Chapter 743

“How did this happen?”

Choi Tae-woo asked, widening his eyes.

He knew that the original author, the director, and the production company would be very careful about remaking and producing the story, since they had experienced a failure before.

Seo-joon smiled coldly and opened his mouth.

“Money attracts bugs, you know.”

***

The next day.

When the internet in Korea was flooded with articles like [Shadow and Knight filming finished! Actor Lee Seo-joon returns home!], [Hollywood star, Lee Seo-joon is back!!], [When will Shadow and Knight be released?!].

The author of the bestseller [Eclipse], Laura Walton, and her younger sister Grace Walton were standing at the entrance of a building in New York.

A building full of offices that could be easily seen in New York.

Laura Walton, who looked up at the building, clenched her shoulder bag tightly with a grim face.

“If something like that comes out again… I swear… I’ll tear it all down.”

She gritted her teeth, recalling the damned movie that she hated to even name. 

Grace Walton, who was worriedly looking at her sister, sighed inwardly.

‘I hope this meeting goes well…’

Of course, with her sister winning.

“Good luck.”

“Thanks!”

With her sister’s encouragement, Laura Walton stepped into the movie production company, ‘New Age’.

***

The movie production company, New Age.

It was a fairly old movie production company, but it was not as well-known to the general public as ‘Marine’. But still, every movie that New Age produced had a decent performance, and people would react like ‘Oh, they made that movie too?’ when they heard the names of their movies.

So, the remake version of [Eclipse] had to do well too.

‘No movie production company would make a movie with the intention of ruining it.’

Right, or was there?

The movie production company that made [Eclipse]?

Hehehe…

Laura Walton bit her teeth hard and laughed.

When the staff who was guiding her stopped, Laura Walton looked at him with a puzzled expression. He knocked on the door of the meeting room.

Knock-

The door opened with a knock.

Inside the meeting room, there were the person in charge of the remake project, the director, and the scriptwriter from New Age. 

They seemed to have arrived earlier.

“Welcome, author.”

With the greeting of the person in charge, they all exchanged greetings and sat down.

They had met a few times before, but there was a lot of tension.

No one opened their mouth in the quiet and bleak atmosphere.

 The person in charge tried to smile awkwardly and wiped his cold sweat with a handkerchief.

‘Help me…!’

He resented whoever suggested making a remake movie of [Eclipse], and why he became the person in charge.

‘Oh, was it me?’

Ha.ha.ha.

He had suggested the remake project and volunteered to be the team leader.

But he couldn’t help but suggest it after seeing the success of Laura Walton’s other work, the novel [Cloud], which was made into a movie.

‘It’s because the original work was popular.’

The novel [Cloud] was popular too, but not as much as [Eclipse].

If he calculated simply by the popularity of the novel, the movie adaptation of [Eclipse] would bring more profit than the movie [Cloud].

So, New Age, which had successfully made the movie [Cloud], accepted his opinion and proposed the remake of [Eclipse] to Laura Walton.

‘I didn’t know it would turn out like this…’

Tears blurred his vision, but it was time to start the meeting.

“Shall we start by talking about the script?”

“I liked it. The characters’ personalities were alive, and the events that happened were appropriate. And I think it would look cool if it was made into a movie.”

As soon as the person in charge opened his mouth, the director answered as if he had been waiting. 

The scriptwriter smiled brightly and said.

“Thank you, director. It was worth rewriting it hard.”

“You wrote it well, scriptwriter. It’s different when someone with experience writes it. And it seemed to match my directing style too. I had a feeling of how to direct it in my head.”

“Of course, director. You noticed it. I like your movies, so I watched a lot of them. I was so impressed by the directing you showed in your previous work, so I put in a similar scene.”

Hahaha.

The director and the scriptwriter were laughing and talking.

If you only looked at this side, it was like a spring with flowers blooming, but on the other side, there was a snowstorm that seemed to swallow up the company.

It was the original author, Laura Walton.

“Shall we hear the author’s opinion too?”

It was almost summer, but it felt cold.

As the person in charge swallowed his saliva and opened his mouth, Laura Walton took out something from her bag and slammed it on the table.

It was a thick pile of paper.

“…What is this?”

The person in charge, the director, and the scriptwriter’s eyes were drawn to it.

“I read the script and corrected the setting errors.”

The identity of that pile of paper was the script that had caused Laura Walton’s dark circles to deepen.

The person in charge reached out and flipped through the pile of paper.

The script, which was originally printed neatly with black ink on white paper, was smeared with red pen. 

It looked like it had a fatal wound and was bleeding all over.

The faces of the scriptwriter and the director were crumpled.

They didn’t have to look closely to see how much the script had been butchered.

Laura Walton, who had spent every night until late, swallowing her tears and making those wounds herself, opened her mouth.

“Let me explain the character setting errors first.”

Her expression and voice were hard, as if her tears had frozen into ice.

That’s how Laura Walton’s criticism continued.

As each page full of red color turned, the faces of the scriptwriter and the director became distorted.

“Do you really think this directing fits here? It’s a completely different background from your previous work.”

Laura Walton, who seemed to have analyzed it thoroughly, attacked them one-sidedly. 

The scriptwriter, who had been biting his lips, glared at her with a fierce look and said.

“…You may not know this, author, but adaptation is different.”

Laura Walton stopped talking as if to say, go ahead and say it.

“Adaptation, you see. You have to choose the important parts and the less important parts according to the time of the movie. And to make the audience understand the story that was made that way, sometimes the settings have to change a little. I just changed some of the settings. It’s a difficult thing to do if you’re not an expert.”

“Directing is the same. In novels, you can express it with text, but in movies, you have to express it with acting, with background. I, the director, will take care of everything…”

The scriptwriter and the director explained.

It was a true story, but to Laura Welton, it sounded like nothing but an excuse.

Well, she didn’t spend a long time arguing with the scriptwriter and the director who only cared about money and fame for nothing.

Laura Welton’s gaze shifted to the manager who was sitting next to her. 

The manager, who had been restless since Laura Welton took out the script from her bag, was sitting with a resigned expression.

“I think I’ve done enough, what do you think?”

“Yes. I understand.”

The manager raised his hands as if giving up.

The scriptwriter and the director looked at him with a puzzled expression.

The manager opened his mouth with a calm expression, looking at the two people. 

To be precise, it was what he wanted to say to the higher-ups of New Age who had brought these two people to this place.

‘No matter how much the film industry runs on connections and networks.’

These two people should know that it’s not good to rely on their contacts too much.

“As you may have forgotten, I told you before that most of the rights for the film adaptation of Eclipse belong to Ms. Welton, the author.”

“…Yes?”

The scriptwriter and the director asked back with a dumbfounded expression, as if they were just background characters. 

They seemed to remember that they had heard something like that from the higher-ups of New Age who had invited them to this place.

‘But, that was just…’

Wasn’t that just a courtesy to the original author?

“Of course, there was a condition that there should be a reasonable reason…”

The manager, who was in charge of most of the important projects of New Age, looked at the script that was covered with red pen on the table.

“This should be enough.”

“So you’re going to accept my request?”

“Yes. That’s right. With this, there’s no way to stop the author from adapting it herself.”

At that, Laura Welton swallowed a sigh of relief and looked at the manager.

She didn’t intend to adapt it herself.

As the scriptwriter said, adaptation was the domain of experts. 

The same was true for directing.

“Then please bring the scriptwriter and the director who produced Cloud to the Eclipse remake project.”

[Cloud], which was successfully made into a film.

She wanted to entrust this [Eclipse remake] to the same two people, but she trusted and left it to the people who were recommended by New Age, who had made [Cloud] beautifully…

‘This is what happened.’

She gritted her teeth involuntarily.

The manager, who saw the original author’s face that looked like growling like the male protagonist (race: werewolf) of [Eclipse], smiled awkwardly and sweated coldly.

“Then, I’ll contact them right away.”

“Yes. Please. Bring them.”

Huh? Huh?

The scriptwriter and the director, who had become background characters, looked at the two people who were talking with blank faces.

***

“How did it go?!”

Grace, who had been waiting at the cafe, asked Laura Welton, who had contacted her and came. 

Seeing her bright sister’s face, Grace jumped up with joy.

“They’re trustworthy people!”

Grace smiled broadly, thinking of the director and the scriptwriter of [Cloud], who were big fans of Laura Welton’s work.

“Let’s celebrate! Let’s buy a cake!”

“Okay!”

On the way home with a big cake.

Grace grumbled with a relieved mind.

“If they had hired good people from the start, you wouldn’t have had to suffer so much! You should have used your power as a best-selling author and an original author more. This is my work! You should have said that. You did a good job with the contract this time.”

Unlike the old days when she had signed the contract carelessly, she had made sure that the original author’s opinion was reflected as much as possible.

“They did a good job with Cloud, so I thought they would do the same this time.”

“Yeah. I thought so too.”

But who would have thought they would stab her in the back.

The Welton sisters shivered, recalling the shock they had received when they read the first adapted script.

It could have been [Eclipse 2].

“But it turned out well!”

“Yeah! We can trust those two people!”

The Welton sisters smiled brightly, thinking of the two people who had made [Cloud] into a beautiful film.

***

The number of messages in the group chat was rising fast from the morning, thanks to the messages from Grace. It was like seeing Grace’s heart rate that was excited with joy.

Reading the piled up messages, it seemed that she had finished the meeting very successfully.

-Charlie: I’m glad it went well.

<Yeah.

<The manager was also a reasonable person, so that’s good.

-Grace:

-Grace: He was the same person who was in charge of Cloud,

-Grace: He’s a competent person:)

-Charlie: Why did he do that this time…?

<Well, you know how office politics and networks are.

<This world is even more like that.

‘If one person makes a mistake, the work goes down the drain.’

It was the entertainment industry, where they had to hire people they had seen for a long time and trusted.

‘But then there are accidents and scandals…’

Seo-jun shook his head, remembering the drunk driving article of some actor he had seen as soon as he came to Korea.

-Charlie: Yeah.

-Charlie: Chefs also get into restaurants by recommendation a lot.

-Charlie: If they can’t do it, they both get scolded.

Grace:

<

Seo-jun, who had fun exchanging messages with his friends, came out to the living room.

The two people who were sitting on the sofa, talking with the morning sun shining through the window, turned their heads. They smiled brightly at him, his mom and dad.

“Did you sleep well, son?”

“It feels like the house is full when Seo-jun is here.”

A comfortable home and cozy and warm parents.

Seo-jun smiled broadly at the scenery that was no different from always.

He liked filming, but he also really liked this everyday life.