Chapter 101: Blowing Up the White House

After Cameron Diaz's party, another profit share cleared, adding $20 million to the Duke Studio accounts. Setting aside the taxes everyone hated, this money didn't entirely belong to Duke.

Under their agreement, five percent of Duke Studio's profit share from The Rock belonged to Nancy Josephson, and another five percent covered his legal and accounting teams. On top of that, Duke needed $10 million to repay his mother's loan; by their verbal agreement, she was also entitled to ten percent of the investment's return as interest.

All told, $14 million would likely be paid out shortly.

This was a highly commercialized, professionalized society. There was no point in dreaming about monopolizing profits and solving every problem alone. Failing to pay people an adequate commission for their work would inevitably lead to losses far exceeding the commission itself, or even the complete failure of the investment.

Calculating it all, Duke Studio would have a $6 million surplus. Added to the remaining $1 million from his directorial salary on The Rock and the $2 million base salary the producers had already paid him for Independence Day, he now had a substantial pool of capital on hand.

How to use these funds was something he had been considering for a while.

Even with his limited grasp of finance, Duke knew that the dollar, like all fiat currency, depreciated rapidly. Sitting on massive amounts of cash was the most foolish way to manage wealth. If he followed Hollywood's typical investment habits, stocks and real estate were the most popular choices for star directors.

These were options Duke had considered, but before pursuing them, he had a far more important use for the money.

Over the next few days, in between prep work for Independence Day, Duke held a series of meetings with his agent, Nancy Josephson. They had several confidential discussions regarding his future film projects. As a former entertainment lawyer, veteran agent, and skilled negotiator, she would serve as his temporary representative for these matters.

However, Duke wasn't about to blindly trust these rat-cunning agents.

"Sofia, I've asked the producers to give you a leave of absence."

In his apartment's living room, Duke looked at Sofia, whom he had specifically brought back after work. "Starting tomorrow, you'll temporarily step away from the crew to assist with Nancy's work."

"Spit it out," Sofia said. She knew that if Duke was prefacing things like this, it had to be extremely important.

"You and the lawyers need to keep an eye on Nancy. I don't entirely trust her."

Having delegated the most crucial task and seeing Sofia nod in earnest, Duke finally continued, "This concerns our future film plans."

"Your plans." Sofia picked up a silver pot and poured coffee into two mugs.

"Right, my plans."

Duke couldn't be bothered to argue the point. He took a sip of coffee, grabbed a thick stack of documents from beside him, and handed it to Sofia. "First, head to New York and buy the film adaptation rights to a Broadway play. Then, go to London to meet the head of a copyright custodial agency. The film rights they manage probably aren't directly in their hands right now. Find a way to persuade them to help us secure those adaptation rights..."

As she listened to Duke, Sofia flipped through the documents. Her expression gradually turned grave, all teasing remarks forgotten. 'What is this guy trying to do?' she wondered. 'Is he preparing to transition his style?'

It made sense. If even she could see the underlying issues with Duke's current trajectory, how could someone with his mind not realize it? He had admitted it himself: pure sensory stimulation would eventually bore audiences, making a stylistic shift inevitable...

Sofia just hadn't expected Duke to prepare such long-term plans before he had even reached the absolute pinnacle of his explosion-heavy blockbusters.

'But can he succeed?' she thought. 'Not only are the themes of these two adaptations a far cry from his style, they're completely different from each other!'

Sofia was still pondering this when she left North Hollywood.

Even though he had indulged himself a bit too much over the weekend, once he returned to work mode, Duke immediately put Charlize Theron and Cameron Diaz out of his mind. Following his pre-established plan, he allocated the newly arrived funds to prepare for the inevitable stylistic transition in his directorial career.

His lawyers, Sofia Coppola, and Nancy Josephson—these were the candidates Duke had settled on long ago. Even with a good friend like Sofia, he wouldn't offer blind, absolute trust. The three parties naturally formed a system of mutual checks and balances.

Of the two works he wanted to acquire, the former was simple enough. Although it was a traditional Broadway play, it had garnered little interest and hadn't been performed in years. The latter, however, was troublesome. His limited memories told him the next two years would be the best window to consolidate its scattered film rights. Otherwise, if it dragged on past 1995, several film studios would jump into the fray, which would undoubtedly complicate things and require far more effort.

As a die-hard fan in his past life, Duke remembered that copyright disputes alone had dragged on for nearly two years, almost killing the project entirely.

Because this initial capital might not be enough, Duke planned to temporarily hold off on repaying his mother's loan, waiting to see how things developed before deciding whether to clear the debt this year. If he ended up short on funds, he would use that money to cover his acquisitions first. If there was a surplus, he would invest it in the stock market.

Nobody was omniscient. Both past and present, Duke was a complete layman when it came to stocks and financial markets. But anyone who had lived through the information explosion of the internet age, no matter how ignorant, had heard of Apple, Microsoft, and Google.

Google was still nowhere to be found, Microsoft was a perennial hot stock, and Apple was currently bogged down in a quagmire, waiting for someone to save it... This much Duke knew for sure.

His investment strategy didn't require complicated maneuvering; he just wanted to hold long-term to preserve and grow his capital. Apple and Microsoft were also among the very few companies he remembered that were currently traded on the stock market.

During his teenage years, Duke had dreamed of investing in finance, amassing a fortune in the stock market, and then storming Hollywood to build a magnificent empire. But before he could even put that plan into action, he realized it was nothing more than a fantasy.

First of all, his family having money and him having money were two different things. Before he turned sixteen, his allowance topped out at a mere $40 a month. If he wanted more pocket money, being a paperboy was the fastest and most time-efficient option, but it barely paid anything. Wanted to do something else? Too bad. Very few companies would hire child labor, let alone pay a high salary.

After he turned sixteen, in accordance with the Rosenberg Family tradition, Duke was forced to cover his own living expenses and the costs of his directorial studies—apart from his hefty tuition, which his mother paid. Working as a crew gofer and an extra didn't actually bring in much money either.

As for the idea of making easy money by humming a few tunes to copy future hit songs or blindly submitting scripts? That was pure delusion.

Setting aside the high level of technical expertise required for the former, even if he could hum the melodies, a composer would still need to transcribe and arrange them. Who could guarantee the composer wouldn't steal the credit? True, the Writers Guild could register works for lyricists and composers, but he would have to become a member first. Membership required thousands of dollars in dues, and the registration fees themselves cost thousands more!

Scripts were just as unreliable. The Big Six Companies alone received over ten thousand scripts every year. How many of those actually became films? And of those few, how many were packaged projects brought in by producers, talent agencies, or A-list actors?

Duke's own early experiences were the perfect reflection of a rookie screenwriter's plight. The desks of Hollywood film companies, large and small, were stacked high with thick piles of scripts just waiting to mold!

And relying on his family's advertising firm to produce a few "futuristic" commercials was even less viable.

It was common knowledge that films were deeply influenced by contemporary social realities, and commercials—despite also being audiovisual works—were even more bound by the limitations of their era!

The logic was painfully simple. Every era had its own unique aesthetic. Commercials were mass-market products; they had to conform to the tastes of the times. Mainstream society always harbored a strange mentality—often possessing a strong sense of nostalgia while fiercely rejecting anything that felt too far ahead of its time!

Every commercial Duke clearly remembered possessed the distinct hallmarks of the internet age. Taking an ad from the internet explosion and transplanting it into the 1980s in hopes of causing a sensation? Was there any method more unreliable, any joke more laughable than that?

His family was indeed wealthy, but he wasn't the owner of that wealth. Let alone a large sum, even spending a few hundred dollars required his mother's approval.

Convince his mother to invest? What leverage did he have to convince her? His expertise lay in film production, not financial investment. Beyond a few basic concepts, he was clueless about the latter. How could he, as a minor, use reasons that wouldn't even fool himself to persuade a seasoned businesswoman like his mother?

He could have hired professionals to gather data and analyze it, right? North America had no shortage of financial experts. But expertise equated to value, and in this hyper-commercialized nation, the most basic measure of value was money. To hire professionals to draft a highly persuasive investment analysis plan—one backed by detailed data and capable of swaying a multimillionaire businesswoman—how much would Duke have to pay?

If he'd had that kind of money to begin with, he would have just bought Microsoft stock directly.

Duke had even fantasized that his father—who divorced his mother in the early 1970s—might have set up a trust fund for him, allowing him to automatically inherit a massive fortune when he turned sixteen or eighteen. But reality proved once again that he was overthinking things.

Aside from lacking money, Duke's memories of 1980s North America outside the film industry were incredibly sparse. He couldn't forget that this was America, not the other side of the Pacific Ocean!

Take the heavily debated Plaza Accord, for instance. He knew it existed, but how many people remembered the exact year and month it was signed? How many remembered the specific dates of oil futures fluctuations? Or the exact days certain stocks skyrocketed or plummeted in the 1980s?

A person's energy is finite. Becoming an outstanding director required not only intense focus but also a massive expenditure of time for study and practical experience. Duke knew exactly what he wanted and understood what he was good at. He wasn't a genius like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs!

Take the two he remembered, Microsoft and Apple. The former saw steady growth throughout the 1980s, making it impossible to earn returns several or even dozens of times over in a short period. As for the latter, after its glory days in the early 1980s and kicking Jobs out, it had sunk into a quagmire. Both its performance and stock price had been on a downward spiral, even flirting with bankruptcy.

Even if he had a little money, Duke wouldn't have been able to profit from them quickly. Furthermore, he didn't know the exact year Jobs returned to Apple; he only knew that Apple became incredibly dominant later on.

Besides, he hadn't had any money in the beginning anyway. And becoming a successful director wasn't something that would naturally happen just because he had been reincarnated. Behind every successful director lay a tremendous expenditure of time and energy!

While Sofia and the others traveled to New York and London, Duke continued to lead the crew through their hectic pre-production schedule. Once late November rolled around and the model construction was finished, the crew officially kicked off their actor-free shooting phase.