Chapter 400: A Bunch of Idiots

Since last week, negative press surrounding The Fellowship of the Ring simply hadn't stopped. The most glaring example was the cross-generational friendship between Billy Boyd and Ian McKellen, which various scheming media outlets had sensationalized into a grandfather-grandson romance. Since Ian McKellen was famously gay, the gossip actually carried a certain degree of believability.

Being gay might not cause too severe a backlash on its own, but a same-sex relationship with such a massive age gap would likely repel a lot of people.

While major mainstream newspapers wouldn't publish such stories, plenty of tabloids eagerly hyped them up. There were even doctored photos circulating online of Gandalf and Pippin gazing deeply into each other's eyes. Duke wasn't the only one who knew how to exploit the internet.

It was hard to say exactly how much damage this had done, but The Fellowship of the Ring's box office would undoubtedly take a hit. Behind this barrage of negative press, it wasn't hard to spot the shadows of Paramount Pictures and Universal Pictures.

Battered by Angelina Jolie's myriad scandals and abysmal word of mouth, Tomb Raider had exhausted its core gamer demographic in its opening weekend. By its second week, its box office took a massive dive. Its daily earnings plummeted in near free-fall to under 3 million dollars. With other media outlets scrambling to cover the hot news, Warner Brothers had quietly bowed out of the main fray.

Originally, neither Duke nor Warner Brothers had explicitly targeted Fast & Furious. For Warner Brothers, it went without saying—this was, after all, just a low-budget production.

Duke only remembered the franchise because it would become massively successful later on. He had barely any impression of its early installments, assuming they had been rather mediocre.

None of them had expected Fast & Furious to rake in over 15 million dollars on opening day alone, nearly crushing The Fellowship of the Ring.

"We made a mistake," Duke admitted bluntly.

Including him, how many of the people sitting in the room—Jamie Jensen, Doug Walter, and Penny Kalis—had actually taken this film seriously?

The result was that on Friday, Fast & Furious came incredibly close to breaking The Fellowship of the Ring's daily streak at the top of the box office since its release.

Jamie Jensen kept his brows tightly furrowed.

"According to my information, the film's box office has completely exceeded the expectations of Universal Pictures and Artists Management Company, even doubling their opening-day projections!"

"Universal Pictures is preparing to ramp up their marketing efforts."

Doug Walter had lost the high spirits he had sported a few days prior. After all, every studio wanted to see its own movies continually succeed.

"They've added 10 million dollars to their promotional budget," he said. "From tomorrow through next weekend, Fast & Furious is going to be our biggest competitor!"

Films that had opened at the start of the summer season, like Pearl Harbor and The Mummy Returns, were now pulling in just over a million dollars a day on weekdays. They posed absolutely no threat to The Fellowship of the Ring, and Warner Brothers no longer paid them any attention.

Doug Walter thought for a moment, then asked,

"Is there anything about this film that we can exploit?"

"They're just a bunch of directors and actors who just climbed up from the bottom. No one paid them any attention before," Jamie Jensen said, shaking his head.

Duke racked his brains, but he recalled very little relevant information. Paul Walker had eventually died, Vin Diesel had become the leading figure of the franchise, and a minor starlet like Jessica Alba had never caught his attention...

"I have a piece of news."

Penny Kalis, who had been silent until now, opened her briefcase and pulled out a tabloid.

"Yesterday, Fast & Furious's female lead, Jessica Alba, visited the gynecology department at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles," she said directly. "The paparazzi bribed the hospital's cleaning staff and got a copy of her lab results."

Penny Kalis said disdainfully, "Gentlemen, it's an incredibly shocking result. The lab tests show that Jessica Alba has herpes. The sexually transmitted kind..."

"Is the news reliable?" Jamie Jensen's eyes lit up instantly.

"We can have someone investigate it overnight," Penny Kalis said. "This kind of thing isn't hard to verify. Her prescriptions, her lab results, her assistant—they can all be checked."

The brief meeting quickly reached a consensus. Jessica Alba's character was heavily marketed for her sexy, sunny, and healthy image. If the actress herself had an issue, it would certainly affect the character.

It was hardly a secret that Hollywood stars slept around, and the public generally didn't care, but catching an STD would become a permanent stain.

After leaving the conference room, the slightly aging Penny Kalis didn't head out. Instead, she followed Duke, waiting until they turned into a deserted corridor before calling out to stop him.

"I know you dislike people interfering in your private life," Penny Kalis reminded him earnestly. "Duke, you are my most important client, and also my very last client..."

She sighed, moving on to the main point.

"Jessica Alba isn't the first, and she won't be the last."

"Thank you, Penny."

Duke knew the PR manager meant well.

"I'll keep that in mind," he said earnestly.

Penny Kalis didn't press the issue. She waved and took her leave. Duke returned to his office, sat in his chair, and mulled over the PR manager's words. Thinking of Jessica Alba, a sudden chill of disgust ran through him...

This industry was exceptionally chaotic. Even the most hopelessly out-of-touch people knew that the stars on the big screen were not angels.

No one knew how many men Jessica Alba had slept with, nor how many women those men had slept with in turn...

Jessica Alba's situation had undeniably given him a wake-up call.

There were undoubtedly plenty of other women in Hollywood who partied wildly without taking any precautions. What if he ended up with one of them?

There were indeed very few things Duke genuinely cared about, but he valued his own body immensely.

He could only count himself lucky that he wasn't into Jessica Alba's type of woman. In his previous life, she had just been a second-rate starlet anyway, entirely failing to pique his interest.

'Perhaps it's time to make a change?'

This thought popped into Duke's head, causing him to frown unconsciously. He really was starting to feel sick of this chaotic private life.

Billy Boyd and Ian McKellen's relationship had consistently been the focal point of attacks against The Fellowship of the Ring. Even though the crew had split into two groups for the promotional tour, dispersing the two men to completely different locations, people still managed to spin stories out of it.

Accusations of them having a "guilty conscience" or "trying to cover it up" flooded the media over the weekend. Certain moral purists had even abandoned their plans to see The Fellowship of the Ring entirely.

Public opinion invariably swayed the audience, and tabloids were no exception. The more famous the subject, the more the public paid attention. Take Billy Boyd and Ian McKellen, for example—before The Fellowship of the Ring hit theaters, how many people would have actually cared about the scandal of their grandfather-grandson romance?

By the same logic, even with Dark Angel on her resume, if Fast & Furious hadn't exploded at the box office on its opening day and then raked in another 13.81 million dollars the next day, who would have paid any attention to Jessica Alba?

The female lead role in Fast & Furious was already changing Jessica Alba's life. Her sunny, sexy, sweet, and healthy image merged almost perfectly with the character's vibe, making her vastly more popular than the film's other female lead, whom Duke had no impression of.

After hitting the big time, media scrutiny naturally followed.

Generally speaking, if an actor's scandal was limited to doing drugs, popping pills, or sleeping around, it rarely affected the movies they starred in. However, if the scandal escalated to the level of racial discrimination or illicit affairs—like the controversies surrounding Mel Gibson, Morgan Freeman, or Angelina Jolie—it would bring a distinctly negative impact to the films they participated in.

Jessica Alba's situation could be said to fall somewhere between those two extremes, but sexually transmitted diseases were universally stigmatized, strongly repelling the public in both the East and the West.

Moreover, considering how exceptionally sunny and healthy her character in the film was, the fact that she privately carried this kind of disease...

With Warner Brothers' capabilities, quietly confirming this matter was not difficult.

Fast & Furious was currently dominating theaters, and Jessica Alba was already a major focal point for the press. Warner Brothers didn't even need to do much. All they had to do was leak the rumors circulating in private circles to the general public, and those media outlets with sharp senses of smell certainly wouldn't let it slide.

The very night Duke and the others concluded their meeting, an anonymous user on TMZ—Warner's gossip website—published a bombshell report. They claimed Jessica Alba had visited a gynecologist for a suspected sexually transmitted disease, and even attached photos of her lab results and prescriptions from the medical center, basically verifying the story.

By the following morning, the print media had reacted as well. The entertainment sections of major newspapers were practically flooded with reports. Especially across entertainment media, the newly minted starlet successfully managed to snag the headlines.

"Jessica Alba Hides Face at Gynecologist, Confirmed to Have STD..."

"Sunny Girl Jessica Alba's Chaotic Private Life Exposed, Suffers from Severe Genital Herpes. Reputation Plummets, Image Suffers a Massive Blow."

Fame brings trouble. It wasn't just a saying, especially not when the trouble involved a scandal of this magnitude.

Aside from a small number of media outlets influenced by Universal Pictures, almost the entire press was frantically hyping the story. To both the media and the public, watching a celebrity suffer—or actively destroying a celebrity's reputation—was a highly entertaining pastime.

Soon, a media outlet managed to buy off Jessica Alba's assistant. This assistant instantly transformed into a former assistant, eagerly spilling the beans and further verifying the authenticity of the scandal.

It wasn't just the media. Guided by calculated hands, a massive wave of anti-Jessica Alba sentiment surged across the internet. This was unlike the so-called grandfather-grandson romance between Billy Boyd and Ian McKellen, which had absolutely no proof; all the evidence clearly proved that Jessica Alba had indeed caught an STD.

"Jessica Alba is a promiscuous bitch who caught an STD..."

"Good thing I haven't fucked Jessica Alba. What luck!"

Similar insults streamed endlessly across the internet. Staring at them with a dark expression, Christophe Rocancourt looked like a volcano on the verge of erupting at any moment, yet he continued to forcefully hold it in.