hollywood melon man

Chapter 444 Willful Creation
It was a sunny afternoon in Los Angeles, when the fake student incident was becoming a hot topic.

The official social media accounts of Disney, Warner Bros., and Melon Studios announced Gilbert Jr.’s next project, tentatively named “false,” which simply means fake.

In fact, Gilbert Jr. had posted three hand-drawn pictures on his social account before, asking fans to guess which movie it was?
One was a design drawing of something like an armored vehicle, making one think that Gilbert Jr. was going to make a war film.

But in fact, that was the design draft of the Batmobile, which was different from the ones in previous Batman movies, so movie fans could hardly recognize it.

Warner Bros. was very anxious. In order to reassure Warner Bros., Gilbert Jr. had reached a cooperation with Lamborghini, whereby Lamborghini would manufacture a prototype car based on his design draft so that it could be provided for filming in the future.

When Lamborghini's designers and engineers saw the design draft for the first time, they all thought that Gilbert Jr. was just daydreaming. According to the design on the draft paper, the car could not be driven on the road at all.

But Lamborghini attaches great importance to this cooperation. Although it is difficult to achieve, there is still so much time. Lamborghini decided to take out all the technologies it has hidden in its box.

Of course, movie fans who want to see this Batmobile will probably have to wait.

Another manuscript is very interesting. It seems to be a strange picture formed after a fungus germinates and spreads, which makes people shudder.

This left movie fans a little confused. Many fans thought they knew Gilbert Jr. very well, after all, they had watched his movies for more than ten years.

But in the end, fans discovered that they didn't know little Gilbert at all.

Yes, these manuscripts by Gilbert Jr. fully demonstrate his qualities as a riddler, making it impossible for the audience to guess.

The third manuscript is even more confusing, it is actually a hand-drawn manuscript of US dollars. Some fans speculated that Gilbert Jr. was planning to make a story about a robber robbing a bank?

You know what, even though I didn’t guess it correctly, the story types are basically within this range.

No one thought that this was actually a topic about counterfeit money, after all, too little information was revealed.

Gilbert Jr. did not reveal any more information at the time and has remained silent until now. For this 'original' story, Gilbert Jr. needs a more sophisticated way to hype it up.

Unfortunately, this year, the Federal Reserve issued a new version of US dollar bills to replace the 1998 version of US dollar bills, which gave Gilbert Jr. room for speculation.

Some true and false news began to appear on the Internet. For example, TMZ reported that in May of this year, Foblet uncovered a counterfeit currency manufacturing case.

The perpetrators were caught on camera while robbing color-changing ink in Canada, and the police followed the clues and arrested this counterfeit money gang in one fell swoop.

The website then adds some photos that are hard to tell whether they are real or fake, and it becomes news.

Similar counterfeit money cases were also reported on several other websites. Some of them were real, but they were old cases, while others were made-up stories with exaggerated details.

When similar reports continue to appear, netizens will naturally be attracted, become interested, and then pay attention to similar things.

All these reports came step by step, and finally led netizens and movie fans to Gilbert Jr.'s new movie.

It doesn’t matter if you don’t care. Little Gilbert has his own internet trolls who can hype up these topics.

When most people on the Internet are talking about this matter, based on the human psychology of following the crowd and getting along with others, other netizens who are not interested in this topic will also get involved.

The North American Internet has been around for more than ten years, and the methods of online promotion have been constantly updated, with Gilbert Jr. being one of the best.

The publicity method used this time is not new. A few years ago, "The Blair Witch Project" used a similar method, using the Internet to report on multiple incidents of witches and ghosts harming people.

Then attract traffic to "The Blair Witch Project" to get box office revenue.

It can be said that the audience went to see "The Blair Witch Project" not because the film was really that good. In terms of quality, Gilbert's earlier horror film "Final Destination" is at least ten levels better than "The Blair Witch Project".

The reason why the audience went to see this movie was purely out of curiosity. Driven by curiosity, the audience walked into the cinema.

So when it comes to "Blair Witch 2", the same method won't work again.

The audience knows you are promoting something but they are no longer interested and don’t want to watch it. So the director of “Blair Witch” disappeared from the screen, but the film company made a lot of money.

The movie "False" also used the same promotional technique, using the suspicion of a counterfeit money case to arouse the audience's curiosity and pay attention to the movie.

The difference is that the quality of the movie script of "False" is much better than that of "The Blair Witch Project", and the cast is much stronger.

While the outside world is still paying attention and hyping it up, Gilbert Jr. has also begun the early preparations, mainly selecting suitable actors and scenes.

The story has moved from Asia to North America, and the filming will be bolder.

The two male protagonists are named Charlie Decker and Iddo Dash, corresponding to the roles of Wu Fusheng and Li Wen in the Hong Kong version.

Tom Hanks is more honest and suitable for the role of Iddo Dash, so that the final plot twist will be interesting enough. Tom Cruise is no less good as Charlie Decker. His performance in "Collateral" makes people realize that Tom Cruise's charm in playing villains is unstoppable.

In addition, there are a lot of gun battles in the film.

Gilbert Jr. hopes that once the audience sees Tom Cruise, they will know that this movie is full of action elements.

Charlize Theron plays the painter Mary Cassatt, and the fake Mary Cassatt. The name was inspired by an American female painter active in the late 19th century, which fits the character's positioning.

The three main actors have been confirmed, but there are many supporting roles in the film that are worth paying attention to. These roles have also attracted competition from major Hollywood actors.

For the role of Crahan Ross, Charlie Decker's main assistant and butler, Tom Cruise recommended Hollywood veteran Dustin Hoffman to play.

The two had worked together on Rain Man, and many people said that Tom Cruise had a weird temper and was difficult to deal with. However, Dustin Hoffman admired Tom Cruise very much, and the two had a good relationship.

Maybe it’s because Dustin Hoffman himself has a rather weird temper.

Gilbert Jr. accepted Tom Cruise's suggestion and immediately invited Dustin Hoffman. Dustin Hoffman readily agreed without even looking at the salary offered by the crew.

Dustin Hoffman is now at this age, and the number of films he takes on is gradually decreasing.

In other words, it's going to be outdated.

Although Dustin Hoffman is old, his heart is not old, and he doesn't want to be outdated so early. So it is a very good opportunity to work with a great director like Gilbert Jr., and the salary is not important.

The role of female police officer Julia Arrow also caused a lot of competition, and the Hollywood starlets who auditioned were almost breaking their heads.

However, for such major roles, only Gilbert Jr. has the final say.

Vera Farmiga finally stood out and was chosen by Gilbert Jr. The reason for choosing her was simple, mainly because she looked familiar, had good acting skills, and had beautiful blue eyes.

As for Officer Mark, who appears less frequently in the film, let Matt Damon make a reluctant cameo appearance!

For the remaining roles, Gilbert did not choose any celebrities. After the audition, the casting director provided a list to Gilbert, who then made the decision and finally passed it.

After the roles were decided, the $1.4 million investment from Warner Bros. and Disney had already been deposited into the account of a third-party insurance company.

This is an original crime film about counterfeit money. The film company was willing to invest $1.4 million in such a film, which was really a generous investment.

Robert Iger bluntly stated at a high-level meeting that if it was not Gilbert Jr.'s project, any director who proposed this project would be kicked out of the company.

Only a few directors, like Gilbert Jr., can get film companies to pay for their willful creations.

In fact, Gilbert Jr. has proved this year that he is not creating original works without reason. As of mid-September, the global box office of "Pirates of the Caribbean" has reached 7.5 million US dollars.

This is also an original movie, but it created a super high box office and brought in huge peripheral income.

So Disney and Warner believed that Gilbert Jr. was a mature commercial film director.

He is the kind of director who combines commerciality and balance very well, and he won't make a film like Heat.

It's not to mention that Gilbert himself actually liked the movie "Heat", especially the style of the gunfight scenes, which influenced many action movies later.

But the film's pace was too slow, and although it was well received by critics, its box office performance was not that good.

The movie "Wushuang" will certainly not follow the path of "Heat". The superstar lineup, amazing action scenes and twists are the selling points of this movie.

Moreover, only Gilbert Jr. has the ability to bring Tom Cruise and Tom Hanks to act in the same film.

By the way, the cast also includes Oscar-winning actress Charlize Theron, Oscar-winning actor Dustin Hoffman, and Hollywood A-lister Matt Damon.

This is also one of the reasons why "Wushuang" required an investment of 1.4 million US dollars. The combined salaries of the three leading actors and the director took up most of the production funds, plus the salaries of the rest of the cast and crew.

There are also costs for scene building, prop production, etc.

Fortunately, the film does not require any brain-burning special effects scenes, otherwise the production cost would have jumped to 200 million.

Two hundred million dollars to make a crime thriller? Not to mention Gilbert, even James Cameron, a director who spends money lavishly, would probably be grumbling.

After the cast was assembled, in mid-September, Cantaloupe Studios held a grand press conference to announce the name and subject of the film.

(End of this chapter)