Chapter 693: The Fight Over Actors' Interests

In terms of prestige, the Saturn Awards fell far short of the Oscars, but they still drew considerable attention from moviegoers. After Transformers won Best Science Fiction Film, Warner Brothers hyped the victory heavily, which in turn influenced the film's market performance.

Transformers was a popcorn movie, after all. Following a hot first month in theaters, its pace at the box office gradually slowed. After the Independence Day holiday, the number of theaters screening the film began to shrink, and its weekend box office slipped below $10 million.

Boosted by the Best Science Fiction Film win at the Saturn Awards, however, Transformers staged a small rebound in mid-July. Defying the usual drop, its box office in North America climbed for two consecutive weekends, pushing its regional total past the $400 million mark in one stroke to reach $411.24 million.

Globally, Transformers followed Titanic, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, and The Dark Knight to become the sixth film to cross $1 billion worldwide. Moreover, with plenty of screening time still left in its run, that $1.05233 billion figure had ample room to climb.

In China, after securing a screening extension from the big scissors, Transformers smoothly surpassed 1 billion RMB, becoming the first film in Chinese cinema history to break 1 billion at the domestic box office.

The film's cumulative box office in China was now approaching 1.3 billion RMB.

Correspondingly, sales of all kinds of Transformers merchandise were booming—especially the toys, many versions of which had completely sold out.

For instance, Peter Coe's chain stores and his newly launched online flash-sale business had nearly cleared out their entire inventory of Transformers merchandise. Within a single week, Duke received three phone calls from him asking for more stock.

Since Coe was the largest offline and online distributor on the West Coast, Duke gave him due priority. The merchandise revenue generated by this film had clearly surpassed that of The Dark Knight.

"The Dark Knight was great, but I still prefer Transformers."

In a car pulling out of the airport, Aerin Lauder shrugged and said to Duke, "You can say I haven't grown up yet, but my biggest goal when watching a movie is simply to relax and be entertained..."

"I'll have someone send an Optimus Prime model to your villa on Long Island later," Duke said, glancing at her. "And Megatron too."

Aerin Lauder didn't stand on ceremony. "Then I'll gladly accept them."

As the car drove out of the airport, Duke looked out the window and asked, "Where are we going? A hotel?"

"Not a hotel." Aerin Lauder gave the driver an address and added, "The renovations on my apartment in Los Angeles are done. I won't need to stay in hotels anymore when I visit."

Duke asked curiously, "When did you buy an apartment in Los Angeles?"

"At the start of the year," Aerin Lauder reminded him. "Right when the real estate market was at its lowest point. I thought it was a good time to buy at the bottom."

She said that, but Duke knew better. Aerin Lauder had zero interest in real estate; she was pouring all her energy into running her cosmetics and luxury goods empire.

Just like Duke, she bought property simply to live in it.

The car soon arrived at their destination. It was an upscale community in North Hollywood, not far from where Duke used to rent. In terms of both security and environment, it was an ideal choice within Greater Los Angeles.

They took the elevator to the top floor. Pulling Aerin's luggage, Duke followed her to a pair of white wooden doors.

"This is the place."

Aerin Lauder didn't seem to come here often either. She checked the apartment number to make sure there was no mistake, pulled out her key, and unlocked the door.

Stepping inside first, she said, "Hmm, not bad. It's very much to my liking."

Duke set down the suitcase, looked around the spacious living room with a slight nod, and followed Aerin Lauder on a tour around the apartment.

The apartment spanned over 2,500 square feet. Decorated primarily in black and white, the rooms were bright and airy, featuring a clean, grand layout.

In its smaller details, the interior design remained deliberately unembellished, leaving the ceiling pipes and reddish-brown brick walls exposed for a distinctive flair. Where the true style of the home was set, however, the apartment perfectly embodied "understated luxury." Black hardwood flooring ran through the living and sitting rooms, the furniture featured sleek lines and top-grade materials, and an oversized vintage clock adorned the dining room wall. Much like its owner, the apartment's overall style exuded an unhurried, refined aristocratic elegance within its grand simplicity.

In addition, the penthouse apartment came with a small rooftop garden bursting with blooming flowers.

"I hired someone specifically to tend to it."

Standing before a cluster of hydrangeas, Aerin leaned in for a sniff and said, "It looks like they've done a great job."

Duke nodded. The small garden was kept in immaculate order, and both the greenery and the blossoms radiated vibrant life.

Back inside the apartment, Aerin Lauder fetched a bottle of juice from the bar, poured a glass for each of them, and said slightly apologetically, "This is all I have for now."

"That's fine." Duke took the glass and had a small sip. "How long do you plan on staying in Los Angeles?"

"I have two sponsorship contracts to negotiate."

Almost every well-known cosmetics brand sought out Hollywood stars for endorsements, and Aerin Lauder's brand was no exception.

"How long I stay depends on how the negotiations progress."

No big-name Hollywood star was easy to deal with. Even if the stars themselves weren't the sharpest, they had plenty of professional agents and managers around them.

"I'm planning to sign Tom Cruise to endorse my men's line," Aerin Lauder said, sitting down in an armchair across from Duke and gently rubbing her forehead. "His agent Pat Kingsley is tough to deal with, and he's no walk in the park himself."

"Do you need my help?"

Hearing Duke's offer, Aerin Lauder shook her head. "I can handle it myself."

She picked up her glass of juice, took a sip, and asked curiously, "I heard from Pat Kingsley that you're planning to work with Tom Cruise on a movie?"

"That's right," Duke said with a slight nod. "I plan to invite him to play the male lead in my new film."

Aerin Lauder lightly tapped her forehead. "I remember you mentioning last time that the female lead is Charlize Theron? Two megastars—oh... just thinking about it gives me a headache."

Duke simply smiled. Putting two megastars in the same film really would bring plenty of challenges.

"Still, with your current status and standing," Aerin added, "I imagine the two of them will rein themselves in a bit."

"If they couldn't be managed..." Duke shrugged. "I wouldn't have invited them."

In truth, as far as Duke was concerned, the two stars themselves weren't hard to deal with; the teams surrounding them were the real trouble. Having returned from his vacation, Charles Roven had already begun negotiations with the agents for Charlize Theron and Tom Cruise. Although both actors had agreed to make concessions on their upfront salaries, their agents were fighting for every inch over the size of those concessions and the rest of their perks.

Big-name Hollywood stars, much like directors of Duke's caliber, were scarce resources, and no one gave up their own interests easily. Just as Duke had viewed Tom Cruise in the past, a star who had made it this far might occasionally make a foolish call on his own, but the assistants, publicists, and agents whose livelihoods were bound up with his certainly wouldn't all be fools.

Moreover, how a star was treated on set directly reflected their standing and clout in the industry. Matching a star's perks to their status was a long-standing Hollywood tradition.

Entertainment news constantly ran stories about stars throwing their weight around—blowing up at people on set, berating paparazzi, trading barbs on Instant Sharing... In reality, for the crew of a tentpole blockbuster, such antics were completely trivial. The contract was where the fiercest battles were fought.

As everyone knew, Hollywood operated under a very strict union system. The Screen Actors Guild set minimum pay rates for its members, meaning that as long as an actor belonged to the guild, they were guaranteed a baseline wage even for a minor role.

Star actors were obviously never satisfied with that minimum. They typically negotiated terms far more generous than the standard guild rates in their contracts—securing not only a guaranteed base salary, but backend profit sharing as well.

In Hollywood, backend participation was a contractual concept. If an actor possessed enough stature and box office draw, endless wrangling and compromise at the bargaining table could win them a share of the film's box office far more valuable than their upfront fee. The bigger the star and the stronger their box office appeal, the easier it was to negotiate backend points—and to work in all sorts of fine-print clauses favorable to the actor.

Beyond box office profit-sharing, big-name actors and their representatives wouldn't stop there. If a film achieved strong numbers at its theatrical Premiere, the actor's agent would demand box office bonuses from the studio. An actor might also demand a set payout whenever the studio sold the film's overseas distribution rights or distribution rights for the North American Region.

They might even demand a set percentage or a fixed sum of the proceeds from those rights sales.

Hollywood's television system worked much the same way. Studios produced pilots for a vast number of American TV shows first, and once ratings and viewer response looked promising, they committed to full-season production. Naturally, the lead actors credited themselves for a show getting picked up as a full series, so they wrote all of these contingencies into their contracts in advance—demanding greenlight bonuses, distribution bonuses, and even award bonuses once the series entered production... leaving no stone unturned.

Anyone who truly believed that top-tier actors were just "mere entertainers" or tools to be toyed with at will by agencies and film investors would be the first one played for a fool, because they wouldn't even grasp the most basic realities of the industry.

If you could just toss out a script or a role and have A-list stars throw themselves at your feet like brainless idiots offering up everything they had... Hollywood might as well be an asylum for the mentally impaired.

Take Charlize Theron and Tom Cruise: even though they were eager to work with Duke and had promised to take a pay cut on their own initiative, they still wouldn't give up a single thing they were entitled to fight for.

And that didn't just go for the two of them—it would be the exact same story with any other movie star.

Moreover, Hollywood's star actors were also very skilled at using third-party guarantees to protect their rights.