My Hollywood System

Chapter 156:

Will entered into a meeting room after being guided by the assistant of the CEO of Marvel. The old meeting room was just two steps short of being extremely shabby.

Amanda was following just beside Will and couldn’t help but give Will signals that the office was way too shabby. Will didn’t say anything and followed inside.

In a medium-sized room– the meeting room, roughly 40-50 people were sitting on chairs that were falling apart. Even the tiles in the meeting room had cracks in places.

Most of these people were old men and women who had worked here their whole life.

As soon as Will entered, most of them had surprised expressions on their faces. Every single person here had watched Will on TV at least once or twice, so they couldn’t help but feel blessed.

Some of the only young employees even had faces that showed signs of worshipping.

Most people here knew that the company had been sold to someone, and they had no future here. But they still kept working to the bitter end because they couldn’t leave this job. They were too old to be hired anywhere else.

Will looked around at the faces of all these people. Most of them were old and at an age where they should have retired and enjoyed their lives instead of working like this.

The heavy atmosphere and dark circles just showed more of the work environment and how stressed these people were.

As Will was glancing around at the faces of people, two people suddenly entered the meeting room, the creaking noise of the door notifying Will of their entrance.

A fat old man whose face screamed ‘he’s the bad guy’, entered the room with a fawning smile on his face. His body was sweating like a pig, and his breathing was heavy due to running here from his office.

“Mr Evans! What a pleasant surprise it is. To think you would personally visit this place, you should have just informed me earlier, and I would have come running to your office with all the files and details you wanted to know.”

Jimmy said as he pushed his fat hand forward for a handshake.

Even after seconds, his hand was still hanging in midair. Then, awkwardly pulling his hands back, he looked at Will’s eyes that looked not at him but behind him.

‘Hmm, I should have expected.’

Will thought after calming his nerves down. As he advanced in his life, unexpected things kept popping up one by one without fail. So although he was a bit surprised, he also knew deep down that there was no Marvel without one particular guy, just like there would be no kids without mothers.

Stan Lee!

This legendary comic writer, editor in chief, publisher, and producer of Marvel comics was standing right in front of him.

He was called ‘The Man’, ‘The King of Cameos’, and many such names. Will’s brain was currently thinking about many possible case scenarios, but seeing the look on Stan Lee’s face, Will couldn’t help but feel angry.

He remembered the past emotions he felt after knowing how Stan Lee was abused by his own family and others. And his current condition didn’t seem any better.

“You, sir, please come here.”

Will called out to Stan, who almost jumped in surprise.

“Y-yes?”

Stand Lee replied, his old and tired voice flowing out of his mouth with great bitterness.

“What’s your name, sir?”

“It’s Stan Lee. Although it’s a pseudonym, I have been called that my whole life.”

Will couldn’t help but feel a bit nostalgic as he heard that.

After a while, Will had finally composed himself and sat down on a chair. Then, looking at Jimmy, he demanded.

“Bring me the last five years’ income file and the comics and characters that are currently popular in the market.”

More and more sweat trickled down Jimmy’s face as he told Ross to bring the files.

‘We are doomed.’

That was the current thought that was reigning supreme in the minds of most of the employees. After all, there were no marvel characters in the market that were extremely popular, and there were too many failed characters and comics.

After a while, Ross had brought all the necessary files, and Will started going through them.

“Go get back to your work. What are you all waiting for? We’ll call you if Mr Evans needs you.”

Jimmy shouted at the employees, trying to make an impression on Will that he doesn’t let people slack.

“Stay, everyone. No need to go anywhere.”

Will said as he raised one of his hands and gestured everyone to sit down as he turned towards Jimmy.

“If you really cared so much about their work, you shouldn’t have called them here in the first place. And after seeing these files, I can tell that working and not working for a day wouldn’t really change anything.”

At Will’s remarks, not only Jimmy but everyone else from Marvel comics got scared. This just meant that he was not happy with the condition Marvel was in right now, which was a pretty natural reaction after he had bought the company.

Every employee right now was just waiting for Will’s final verdict of kicking them out.

Will went through all the files in great detail for a whole hour and found out that only the comic characters such as the fantastic four, Captain America, Hulk, Doctor Strange, and Wolverine, were slightly popular and profitable.

There were too many characters that Will couldn’t even recognize. Not only that, the actual big shots like Spiderman, Daredevil, Iron Man and Thor were missing.

Avengers was filled with characters Will had never even seen before, and major characters like Thor and Iron Man were missing.

Wondering what had gone wrong, Will looked at Stan again.

“As far as I know, you create these stories, right?”

Will asked, and Stan couldn’t help but feel surprised. There was no way Stan Lee was popular or even much known, and not many people remembered that he wrote the stories.

“Yes, I do.”

“What happened to Peter Parker? What about Iron Man, Thor, or Daredevil?”

Will asked curiously, and this time, not only Stan but also everyone else in the room was surprised. How Will knew about all these characters and how he had bought Marvel, some things finally started making sense to them.

‘He’s a childhood fan of Marvel!’

There couldn’t possibly be any better reasoning to sum up this situation.

“Uh, Peter Parker died five years ago in the comics and never returned to any more issues. As for the others you are asking about, most of them never came to life in front of people as the CEO and editors never supported the decisions to bring them to the market. So most of these characters aren’t used much or are shelved.”

Stan replied, thinking about the past where the characters that he worked so hard to make were thrown away by the CEO.

Will stared at Jimmy, who seemed to be shrinking with every passing second.

Stan told how the past CEO and then Jimmy, who took over, both controlled the creative team’s processes, and hence not many characters that could work out were marketed enough, nor did they have as much life into them as Stan was planning to bring them in.

Will rubbed his forehead for a moment, thinking about the number of changes that they would have to bring, and couldn’t help but see a headache coming.

“Hey, Mr Spark, right? Contact my secretary to collect the forced termination amount, if there is any mentioned in your contract. You can leave now.”

Will said, and everybody in the room got scared out of their wits.

The first thing he did was kick out the company’s CEO. What chances did they have of surviving?

“No, sir, no. You can’t do this! I have got a family to run. Sir, boss, please don’t do this.”

Jimmy immediately fell to the ground as he held on to Will’s leg without an ounce of shame as he begged for Will to change his mind.

“But sir, aren’t you a widower? You don’t even have any kids as far as I remember!”

Ross chimed in, putting on an innocent face while trying to suppress his laughter on the inside.

“Th-that….aah, ohhhh, ughhhh.”

As he was trying to figure out what to say, Jimmy suddenly held both his hands on the left side of his chest as he started to groan.

“Stop right there. Are you trying to mock me? I’ve worked with A-list actors and given birth to A-listers. Do you seriously think you can fool anyone with that third-grade acting? Wait, I just feel like I insulted the third-grade actors by comparing them to you.”

Jimmy immediately stopped his actions and tried to suck up to Will more but to no avail.

“Ross, right? Kick him out for me.”

Will said as he sat down on the chair again, watching Jimmy get dragged out by Ross.

After the room’s atmosphere calmed down again, Will looked at everyone’s faces as he thought about what to do next. Soon, an invisible light bulb formed on his head as he went to Stan Lee.

“I am a big fan, sir.”

…

//DreamThree//

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