Chapter 41:

“How much did you say?”

Will’s voice shuttered as he took in the number that George had just said. He was expecting a good enough box office amount, but it was still too much.

-Yeah, I was shocked too, Haha. It’s around 17 million for the first week. Will, you don’t realise, but we are doing way better than most movies on the box office currently.”

“That means we already recovered the costs and even made a big profit.”

-Yeah, and it’s just the first week! Will, you and your movie are a wonder! A gift from Jesus!

One could clearly feel George’s excitement from his voice, and even Will couldn’t stop himself from laughing out loud.

17 million dollars in the first week was no joke!

And it should be noted that this was just the first week and the occupancy rate in cinemas was just increasing day by day, especially the midnight shows that would give the real scare to the viewers.

Many self proclaimed strong people watched it just to see if they would be scared and ended up scared shitless.

At the same time, 17 million meant that the [The Blair Witch Project] had ranked 4th in the North American Weekly Box Office Rankings!

The movie above at the 3rd rank was [The World of the Dead]. Although the movie was bad, the marketing cost has been too much, and it has barely crossed [The Blair Witch Project] because of this.

It was hard to say if this Lauren Studios movie would at least break even, especially with the hype of [The Blair Witch Project], a movie in the same genre.

Will was sure that his movie would cross it pretty soon.

Aside from that, the other two movies were [The Knight’ Prince], a mediaeval fantasy headed by Frank Joe, one of the oldest actors in Hollywood, and the other one was [Love me, Zinon], a rom-com produced by one of the top six studios in Hollywood.

Both of these movies were running for weeks and were slowing down.

Will felt like from next week, [The Blair Witch Project] would surely occupy the 1st rank and would make his way into the history of cinema.

As the hype around the movie was just increasing, even the media started paying close attention to it, and some of the reporters even went to the Wheel Works studios office and interviewed George.

In the interview, he let out that the director of the movie was a 21-year-old EUC dropout, and it was made on a budget of fewer than 100k dollars.

Just this one sentence spread like wildfire, and suddenly, the media started advertising the fact.

***

As the craze of [The Blair Witch Project] was starting to settle in the hearts of the crowd, the media in the United States especially can’t let go of such a chance.

Famous news channels sent their reporters on literal man-hunts as at least 1-2 reporters were stationed around every medium to large-sized theatres for the sole purpose of taking interviews of people who have just watched the movie.

A young reporter holding his mike in front of the cameramen started with a summary about the movie as he noticed that the movie inside the Blue Bell theatre in Las Vegas had ended.

“I’m reporter David from BNN news with cameraman Thomas. The craze of [The Blair Witch Project] is increasing day by day as the enjoyers of the horror genre have titled it as the standard for all Hollywood movies. The story is about three students who have gone to shoot a documentary about the legendary Blair witch, but these students never returned.”

“A year later, their footage was found that seemed to tell the story that they went through, of course, this isn’t really as per the confirmation from the distribution company. Yet, there are people who still call it a real story.”

As people walked out, a middle-aged woman with grey hair came out; the reporter instantly went to her to take her review.

“What do you think about the movie?”

The woman seemed to be surprised at first, then noticed the mic and camera.

“Two words, absolutely fantastic! This was the scariest experience ever.”

She said with her eyes moving as if to convince the reporter.

“Why? Why do you think so?”

David asked to elaborate on her view, which the woman excitedly continued with.

“I don’t know! It’s like they took a concept and stuck to it to a very terrific level. I think that the performances of the three actors are so realistic and… convincing, without which the film wouldn’t work at all. I just found it all very… invigorating, fresh and…haha terrifying.”

David, who saw that the woman was co-operating, asked another question.

“There are a lot of people who are saying the movie is real footage. Do you believe it’s real too?”

The woman just smiled and looked at the reporter’s ID and said.

“David…. I’m seduced to think that whatever is happening on the screen is real and natural, that’s how enjoyable a movie is, and that’s how good the ‘realism’ factor of this movie was. I loved getting scared witless from this film.”

The interview continued for a while, and this woman’s interesting replies spread all over the media and the internet. The particular clip of her review got almost over 500k views on MeTube

***

As the reviews like this from the audiences got famous, the popularity of [The Blair Witch Project] sored high.

Every day, there would be some of the other incidents that would be enough to make headlines. Even Will would have doubted these incidents as marketing stunts if he wasn’t the director himself.

The movie was getting extremely popular due to factors that Will hadn’t even considered. First was that woman’s review. Secondly, some weird guy decorated his neighbourhood parking lot with the cross signs of Blair Witch, scaring people shitless and getting arrested in the process.

Still, these types of incidents kept happening, and some media channels tried to question the authenticity of these events, only to be diverted by some other incident.

The movie grossed $40 million in the second and $77 million in the third week, bringing about the awe of everyone.

It was the third week of the movie’s premiere, and it had remained on #1 for the last two consecutive weeks. The highly anticipated movies that were about to be released were already scared of their box office getting affected due to [The Blair Witch Project].

Soon, as the movie’s popularity reached a certain point, people finally started to question the director and actors of the movie.

They weren’t kept in the dark for long as Wheel Works posted information related to the director, actors and the cast on their website and MeTube channel.

This caused another wave in the viewers and audiences as they couldn’t believe such a young director was behind this masterpiece. He had also broken the record in Hollywood as the youngest director to earn more than 50 million in the first month of the premiere, while the first month was nowhere near its end just yet.

Everyone from the main cast received a lot of attention from the media as they dug out the information of each main lead and the director, bringing upon another row of exclamations filled with awe and incredulity.

The female lead, June Roberts, was an actor who had never played any role apart from being extra, bringing about the rage of people as they thought that other directors hadn’t done justice to her talents, as her performance in [The Blair Witch Project] was too awe-inducing.

The other two leads, Marcus and Zach, were also low time actors without any particular movies or fame to back them up, yet they came out with such amazing performances.

The most incredible of the bunch was the director himself. Will Evans, a 21-year-old EUC dropout without any backing or earlier achievements, seemed to have come out of nowhere as he started his trip to Hollywood.

Not only was he the director of this stir-causing movie, but he was also the screenwriter and producer. How he got the funding to make the movie was another question altogether when people learnt about his run-down rented apartment.

His history was nothing spectacular, and he was never too bright of a person from whom people would expect a future star.

But here he was, coming out with such a risky yet genius movie. People’s interest and attention were piqued, and ‘Will Evans’, this name became the centre of attention between the youth and old alike.

There were many unanswered questions about him, so the media dug out and interviewed his ex-classmates to his current landlord.

They found out that Will was a guy who recently became an orphan, and after losing his dad, his attitude changed, and he started working on [The Blair Witch Project].

There were many made-up juicy stories related to his past, and the media used the fact that he was someone who recently became an orphan to gather more sympathy from the viewers and audiences.

On the other hand, several famous critics also finally found time to watch and give a review of the horror movie that has started a craze.

Erwin Marshal, an old critic, called the movie “A fresh breath of air with a unique way to capture the story.”

Lisa Hudson gave the movie three and a half stars out of five and called it, “The biggest dark horse of the year.”

Suraj Kumar, a movie reviewer from Los Angeles Daily, called it “Something unprecedented that has managed to charm the viewers and rightly so!”

It wasn’t like there were only positive reviews. Many critics said that the movie was a documentary and not a real movie with a bland storyline.

A famous reviewer with a personal blog, username Zayn F called the movie “A bland storyline and something which didn’t give me a single scare. Don’t waste your time on it!”

Even with the negative and positive reviews, the movie worked spectacularly, and everyone involved was pretty happy.

Will, the cause of all this stir, had finally decided to buy a car. He bought a car that resembled a Hyundai Equus from his past life, the silver-coloured one.

June was finally coming back from her parent’s place, and Will decided to pick her up from the airport.

…

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