Chapter 40:

It was early morning when Will opened his eyes and woke up at the sound of the alarm.

Getting out of bed wasn’t a hard task for Will; he was a morning person, after all. However, today it was a bit different.

He had a dream early in the morning, and he kept waking up from time to time due to it, waking up and going back to sleep just to experience the dream again.

Will dreamed about a full-packed theatre showcasing [The Blair Witch Project], and when the movie came to an end, everyone stood up to give a standing ovation.

‘Getting a standing ovation for a horror movie… that’s something funny.’

Sitting upon his bed, he stared at the digital clock hanging on the wall to his right.

[07:34 AM]

[26th October]

This was Halloween weekend, and Will had a good feeling about this week’s audience turnout in the cinema halls.

‘I have a feeling this week will be the best week of my life.’

Taking a light breath, he removed the blanket from himself and headed towards the washroom while recalling last night’s events at his Uncle Ben’s house.

Last night, he had dinner at his uncle’s place, and later, Jennifer dropped him off at his apartment, which he had insisted on even though Uncle Ben invited him to spend the night at his place.

Will didn’t wish to be too reliant on his Uncle Ben and give their family any trouble. And the other thing was, he liked this place better.

He remembered the call Benjamin talked about, and he decided to put it at the back of his mind for now as it wasn’t his priority.

While brushing his teeth, he switched on his phone. The phone’s battery had died while he was watching the movie, and by the time he got back to his apartment, he was too tired to turn it on.

‘Come to think of it… I don’t even remember much… how did I leave Jennifer’s car to go to my room?’

Before he could dwell anymore in thought, the phone switched on, and a string of notifications flashed in front of his eyes.

[12 Missed Calls]

[23 Messages]

“…”

Will put the phone down and immediately went to rinse his mouth.

Coming back, he first called June. Most of the missed calls were from her.

She was currently at her parent’s house, visiting them for the Halloween weekend. Even though she wanted to watch the movie in the cinema with Will, he told her it would be good if she watched it with her family, because he was confident that this was going to be a big turning point in her career.

It was still early in the morning, and getting no response from the call, Will assumed she was most likely asleep.

The next person he called was Carl.

The latter had played a major role in making this movie a reality.

-Hello, Will, is that you?

“Good morning, Carl, yeah it’s me.”

-Good morning, lad. Where were you yesterday? No one picked up your phone. Did you go to any cinema hall to watch the movie?

“I was sleeping for most of the day, and in the evening, I rushed to the cinema hall. Uncle Ben had invited me over, and during that time, my phone’s battery died.”

-Oh, never mind that I was calling for ways to ask about the turnout of the audience at the cinema hall. How was it?

“Uhm… it wasn’t much. Not even half of the seats were full.”

-Yeah, that’s a bit natural. I called you yesterday afternoon to tell you to be prepared for this sight and not to be discouraged. This is just the opening weekend of your very first movie. I have a feeling the real show will start in the next few days.

“Yes,” Will nodded, “I am confident that it will attract more and more audiences. However, we shouldn’t slack. I hope you can continue uploading the interviews on MeTube, of the people coming out of the cinema hall after watching the movie.

-Oh, don’t you worry about that, I will handle it all. Anyway, the official date of the occupancy rate in each cinema would come out in the afternoon.

The occupancy rate was calculated by how many people bought the ticket, both from the cinemas and the online websites. All this reached the distribution company in a day and was the best way to know if a movie was doing well or not.

“How much are you expecting?”

-I would be happy if it’s 15 percent.

“That’s around the same I predicted. Well, it will just increase this week. Nothing tops horror movies in Halloween week.”

Will was on call for a few more minutes, and after hanging it up, he stared at the phone screen for a good long minute with a frown.

‘Am I forgetting something?’

Just then, a thought flashed in his mind, and he recalled the system prompt he got during the award function in the Annual Film Festival.

It’s already been more than a month, and he remembered it now. Shaking his head, he brought the system screen.

[Congratulations on winning a basic level award at a film festival.]

[Achievement – Award Gobbler (Repeatable)

Reward – 1 lucky spin]

‘Huh. So this time, it’s a lucky spin instead of fame points.’

Instead of waiting and dying from anticipation, Will immediately used the lucky spin chance he got.

The translucent screen started scrolling down rapidly and then came to a halt, leaving a pleasantly surprised Will as he couldn’t help but smile at the reward.

***

In the next few days, Will got in the habit of waking up and going through online forums and social media platforms to see what people were saying about [The Blair Witch Project].

The only time he would go out was to see people’s live reactions in the cinema hall, and he could see that gradually, more and more people were getting attracted to his movie.

Due to the way it was made, many people had doubts that it was actually a real documentary and not a movie. Wheel Works didn’t clarify anything related to this rumour, and it just added to the people’s curiosity.

As it was Halloween week, more horror movies were also getting released. Will has already watched most of them, and he had to say that their quality wasn’t something that could surpass [The Blair Witch Project].

One of the movies was [The World of the Dead]. The surprising thing about this movie was that it was distributed by Lauren Studios.

Will had watched it yesterday, and it wasn’t anything special. It was easy to guess that Lauren studios just wanted a movie to release during Halloween and rushed the selection.

In the end, it was a wrong choice.

Unlike that, [The Blair Witch Project] was on the rise every day. And at that time, a major incident happened.

A 16-year-old who was watching the movie got a heart attack at the sudden appearance of the Blair witch. The incident brought waves of media outlets and articles on the web to be written about the movie.

The incident caused an uproar, especially on social media, as people started to question more and more about the movie.

Will, who heard about the incident, immediately contacted George.

“It’s me, Will. Did you hear the news?”

– Yeah, I did. Honestly, don’t worry about it. If someone tries to find trouble, we will handle it easily. This isn’t the first time a casualty has appeared due to a horror movie.

“Yeah, I know. I am not worried about that. It’s time for us to gain a massive advertisement boost, and this incident will prove very useful in deciding our total numbers in the box office next week.”

– Y-you …mean?

A peculiar smile appeared on Will’s face, making him look as charming and innocent as a sage, his next words not matching his sage-like aura.

“Yeah, someone getting a heart attack from our movie is actually pretty good. The news would spread like wildfire and give our movie free promotion. I’m expecting the audience rating to increase by at least 30% by the weekend.”

– That… that’s true. I didn’t think that way.

The tone of George’s voice was like he was impressed. They talked for a while more, and George promised that he would do everything to use the heart attack incident as publicity.

For a moment, Will thought he was using someone to profit, but it was Hollywood, and he needed to do everything to make sure his movie became a huge hit.

The next day, the incident had already spread.

Many news websites have covered it, and one of those major websites was Movie flex. There was an article titled ‘Horror movie causes heart attack’.

It was more than enough to attract people, and soon, many people read the article and commented on it.

-Wow! Is this true?

-My brother said he watched this movie yesterday. He was sleeping with the lights turned on.

-Seems like a marketing tactic.

-I’m going to try out this movie. I heard it’s based on real footage.

-Just as I thought I wouldn’t get any good horror movies, this article came on my feed. Going to try it out today.

-Is the kid okay?

-is this movie really that scary? it seems like a farce….

-Yeah, I wonder the same thing. Is it really that scary to have a heart attack?

These were the comments under the article, and it was getting more and more reads by the hours.

At the same time, those who have already watched [The Blair Witch Project] were recommending it to their parents, especially young teenagers and adults.

As they can’t change into costumes and go from house to house to ask for trick or treat, they decided to go watch a horror movie, and Blair Witch Project was the obvious choice.

All this resulted in a huge increase in the occupancy rate in theatres day by day. On the first day, it was only around 15 percent.

The next day, it was 30 percent.

Then, 45 percent.

70 percent.

And the movie was just getting more and more hyped. At the end of the week, George called Will to tell him about the weekly gross of the movie.

Will was expecting a fair number, but when George finished talking, even his eyes went wide.

…

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