Chapter 361. A-Lister

Chapter 361. A-Lister





Articles were coming up everyday after [The Black Saint] crossed 500 million dollars. The same publications had laughed at Aiden during the marketing for the movie and now the same companies were hyping him up.
Aiden was reading a few of these articles daily as Wade and Uncle Sam would often send them to him.
They were very happy for him to finally achieve something that not many actors had in the world.
But the article that he read with the most focus was the one which said that he was now an A-lister. It was an article by the LA Times, one of Hollywood's leading publications.
Although there were no written lists in Hollywood, an imaginary list was certainly a reality. A-listers were the actors who were the safest bet and had great box office pull.
If a studio wanted to do a big budget movie, the first thought they would have would be to sign an A-lister. Even if they have to pay the actor tens of millions, it was worth it because of the box office draw.
The list changes every few years as actors get old or change their filmography trajectory. New faces were rare in the A-list these days as it was too hard for an actor to be relevant in the times when the worth of an actor is going down and the worth of a character is moving up.
But there were exceptions and Aiden was one of them.
It took him a couple of days before it hit him that he was now an A-lister. It was because not a lot changed after the article but he noticed that people's perception about him certainly changed.
In the success party (It was actually the third success party as the CEO of Granite films had gone crazy in a good way) of [The Black Saint], too many studio executives from Big 6 studios, directors and other A-list actors that he had never met wanted to talk with him.
These studio executives and directors mostly didn't have a script idea for him, barring a few, and just wanted to meet him to form a connection for the time they got an idea.
As for the actors and actresses, some gave him advice on what to do now that he was at the starting of the peak while others asked him to join their cliques and groups.
He had to say that the advice he got was sometimes sincere and sometimes just straight up weird. One guy told him to get a vasectomy otherwise he was going to pay a lot in child support by sleeping around with models and other actresses.
The actor who said this had already assumed Aiden was a playboy or was going to be one.
Another actor who was a bit more sincere than him told him to not do any strong drugs and avoid superhero movies.
It was a bit unfamiliar for Aiden, not because he wasn't used to attention. He was used to attention now but this time, these people were looking at him as an equal.
Someone who had something special — Box office record and a proven connection with the audience.
All this also meant that the scripts he got increased but this time, the scripts increased in both numbers and budget.
A big 6 studio even offered him the lead role in a sci-fi mech action movie called [Armoured Wars]. The budget of it was a whopping 300 million dollars and Aiden only rejected it because the script felt weak to him.
In the last few days, he had a lot of meetings with different producers on projects face to face as they wanted to see him.
It seemed like there was a competition to nab the newest A-list actor for a project among the big studios.
According to one producer, one reason was also Aiden's age, which was not even 30 yet. He could still play a college student easily and was a great choice for a rom com or any movie that required a younger actor as the main character.
Most A-listers were above 40 and 50 at the moment and they often played married men or fathers, so Aiden was fresh in that regard.
It seemed like a few studios like Red Ant studios wanted to revive the rom com genre with a fresh take on the narrative. And Aiden was one of their first choices.
"You know I feel like I should retire right now?"
"Are you suddenly realising your age?"
"No, I just want to retire at my peak and there's nothing better than the actor I signed years ago by chance becoming one of the biggest stars in Hollywood. This is the golden period of my career and if I retire right now, then my legacy would look great."
Wade said as he drank his coffee. People around him gave him a strange look and went back to their work.
Aiden shook his head and took a sip out of his tea.
Currently, he was sitting in his office which had expanded in the last month. Jody and Wade had recruited more people to handle the work and the team was now of 20 people.
It was a gradual increase as his stature had become too big to handle for a small team.
It truly seemed like an office now and they were planning to move to a different place in a month. A bigger place that was closer to his apartment.
"Aiden, you have to see this."
A door opened and Tom suddenly walked in the lounge area with Sasha.
"What happened?" Wade asked, wondering if any problem had come up.
"It's nothing big. Just Arno in one of the promotional interviews for his next movie."
Hearing that, Aiden's interest was piqued and even Wade craned his neck to look at the mobile screen.
On the screen, Arno was in an interview and the interviewer was asking him about his movie but instead of talking about it, he went on a rant about [The Black Saint].
"Actually, after I made my movie, I realised that some parts of it are lacking because I watched [The Black Saint]. Have you watched it yet? It opened my eyes on what I could do to show more emotions. The movie is actually great…"
According to the rules of Aiden's bet, Arno had to talk for 10 minutes about [The Black Saint] in each of his interviews. And some of these interviews were extremely short.
Like this one was just 20 minutes, so he had to spend half the interview talking about [The Black Saint]. By the end of the video, Arno even looked like he had enough of it.
Frustration was clearly visible on his face.
"I feel bad for him but this is surely going to go into the internet hall of fame. Things rarely are dead on the internet and this is giving [The Black Saint] more push at the box office."
The movie was in its third month at the box office now and although a lot of theatres had taken it out, around 500 of them still were running it and it was getting decent business for a three month old movie.
"That reminds me. We need to sign at least two projects for the next year. This year, you only had one release and it's fine but you need to stamp your authority as an A-lister now."
Wade said, looking at Aiden. Tom and Sasha also followed suit. Most of the scripts had been read by Aiden and the final decision was his as to what type of a movie he was going to do.
Feeling a bit of pressure, Aiden felt like he won't be able to stay without a project for long.
Having no choice, he revealed his inner thoughts.
"It's not like I don't want to select a project. It's just I'm more worried about the box office than before now. I'm hanging on to the A-list for now but one flop and I'm going to fall back."
"That's why we need to select the best projects."
Wade said and before Aiden could reply, his phone started ringing.
He took it out and saw it was from Ava.