As days went on, the box office collection of [30 days of Happiness] also kept increasing.
In just the first week of release, it grossed 35.9 million dollars at the box office. It was a massive figure for an independent rom com and people were already guessing that the movie was going to enter the 100 million club in a month and a half before eventually slowing down.
After all, the target audience was teenagers and young adults who would have already watched the movie by then and it would be hard to get more out of them.
But it was undeniable that the movie was a massive success. After gobbling up a lot of screens from [Leap in the Sky], it managed to top the North American box office rankings.
It was the first case of its type this year.
After all, it was very rare for independent movies to top the box office. One of the reasons it had happened was because no big movie had released in October and it would only be in December that a big studio movie would release.
Till then, [30 days of Happiness] was going to rule the box office.
Not only that, overseas box office and streaming platform deals would eventually make it gross 200 million dollars. There was already demand for it in Europe and Canada for a full release.
A rom com was the easiest to sell no matter what country.
Omar as the producer of the movie and Eternal life movies as the distributor were going to make a lot of profit from this and Omar had even told Aiden, "Thanks to you, I could grow my investment firm into a full fledged production house."
Apparently, that was his ultimate goal when he had left his family business to start investing in movies.
Sofia, the CEO of Eternal life was also unable to contain excitement and was already handing out bonuses to her staff. As for Leo, his life had changed the most.
From an assistant director to Lincoln, he went on to become a 'People's choice award winner director whose movie had been a big hit at the box office'. His stocks were rising everyday in Hollywood and he even said that a few studios had contacted him for his next movie.
He had directly become one of the most promising young directors in Hollywood.
As for Aiden, media houses were hyping him like never before. Truthfully, Wade also had a hand in it as he had contacted reporters he knew to write more about Aiden.
As the story of the movie's success was interesting enough, they were also willing to write about him.
It was then that the cover of Hollywood Weekly came out with Aiden's picture on the front. The famous magazine has written the headline, "The next big thing in Hollywood" for him.
In the interview with Katherine, Aiden had talked about the details of what had gone on when he had signed [30 days of Happiness] and how he knew Leo from his debut movie. Those parts were pretty highlighted in the interview and instantly became famous.
The statement that Aiden was the one who told Leo to make it a musical to show more of Arthur's characteristics made a lot of people think that this movie only worked because of Aiden.
Everyone knew that he had made the soundtrack and his marketing tactic was what made people more interested in the movie initially, so Aiden got most of the praises.
It was so much that the movie instantly started becoming recognised because of him.
Wade and Aiden didn't have a hand on it and it happened pretty naturally but no one was complaining. Leo himself had talked about it in multiple interviews.
A famous director who watched the movie even commented, "Oscars are blind if they don't nominate Aiden for the best soundtrack category. He's a brilliant guy."
Of course, Aiden didn't think a lot about the comment as for him, Oscars was far away and something he wasn't really concerned about.
One thing he had learned in his life was that rather than awards, it was way more important to get in the hearts of people. Awards might give one a lot of recognition and acclaim but if one is in the hearts of people, he would always be loved by the audience.
Not everything was good obviously.
Night Hawk studios who were going through a loss now were apparently pretty furious at Rodrigo for letting go of Leo and [30 days of Happiness].
In anger, one of their producers talked about it, "[30 days of Happiness] was going to be our movie. Everything was set. Just the director wanted Aiden to play the lead and there was a clash because he was a new actor. There were concerns because no one knew if he could get people to come to the theatres. Apparently, he could and he's very creative about it. It's pretty much our bad luck that we choose not to take a risk."
These types of statements easily made tabloid headlines and with all the attention on Aiden after the movie, one thing was clearly set.
Just with three movies and one role in a sitcom, Aiden had proven in just a year that he was here to stay and maybe, it won't be wrong to stay that he was now the most sought after young actor.
Especially because of the three dimensional skills he possessed.
A studio executive from Zero International even said, "We would love to work with him on a project. He made his debut in our movie, so if we need a young actor for a role, there's a lot of chances we would go for him."
That was a lot of praise from an industry that makes it hard for an actor to stay relevant for a long time.
So, it also added pressure on Aiden to choose his next projects very carefully.
Was he going to go for another risky and niche project? A horror movie or a fantasy? Or was he going to go the safe route and star in a lot of comedy and rom coms to go on a similar route such as Harold Wood.
There were also chances that Aiden might just start getting supporting roles in big blockbusters. Kind of like Katie when she was at the start of her career.
Options were endless and it was only on Aiden as to what he wanted to choose.
***
In a cafe, Aiden was smiling while signing off autographs for a couple who approached him when he entered the cafe.
"We are big fans of your movie."
"Yeah, we watched it yesterday and loved it."
To the compliments, Aiden just politely nodded. He had gotten a lot of them recently but everytime, he felt like he had achieved something big.
They left after getting their autographs and Aiden turned to look at Wade who was quietly sipping on his coffee.
"You sure look to be enjoying your success." Wade said.
"Yeah, it kind of hits differently than when my songs get popular."
"That's just the feeling of a hit movie. Your hit movie." Wade put down the cup of coffee and decided to start the main topic.
"Gordon Lee is probably going to get fired. How do you feel about it?"
"Complicated. I know he deserved it but his career got ruined."
Aiden said honestly. It was a very conflicting feeling for him but he also knew that Gordon had done the wrong thing and had not apologized for it.
In a way, it was just karma.
"This is Hollywood and it's more common than you think. Just not everyday it makes headlines. A lot of actors lose work daily and a lot of studio employees get fired because of something that wasn't their fault. At least Gordon is just paying the price for his actions."
Wade said and both of them talked about it for a bit more. Apparently, Vanity Magazine published a whole statement about it and had taken down the review of Gordon from their site and they would change to the magazine issue too.
Though, they never said that the review was paid but that was not something a big Hollywood magazine was going to accept.
Instead, they put everything on Gordon and acted like they didn't know a thing about it.
After talking about Gordon, they started discussing a very important topic.
"Anyway, I think I might be able to get a good team for you. I got a real estate agent to show me the places we could rent for the team workplace. We are not going to make them live together right?"
"No, I don't really think that's a good way."
"Some celebs do that for efficiency. They are more of those narcissistic fools who don't really care about their employees."
"I don't really want to be that."
Aiden said, shaking his head.
He was on his own when he had gotten selected in X-Star. After that, he had gotten [Shadows of Wars] and then, Wade had joined him, making his career trajectory very smoother.
After Wade became his agent, Aiden was never out of work and even if in the starting movie offers were low, his agent had used his connections to get him more.
For a whole year, Wade had handled everything on his own but that can't go on for longer.
With Aiden's music career booming and [30 days of Happiness] being such a big hit, it was practically impossible for Wade to handle everything on his own.
He was already overworked during the Toronto film festival.
That's why, they had decided to finally get their own personal team. A team that was going to revolve around Aiden to make him a bigger star and was absolutely necessary to increase his stardom.
...
