Versatile Superstar: Rise In Hollywood
chapter-232

Zetflix soon revealed that [Disconnected] was coming on their platform by a social media post but it didn't get any reactions.

The movie was still running in the theatres and yesterday, it had only earned 56k dollars. It was going to be taken out as soon as possible and the North American box office had already announced it as a flop.

No one cared about it and even Black Line Cinema wanted to forget it. They were just glad that they were able to get a good deal out of Zetflix.

Now whatever they would do with the movie, it wasn't their problem.

It was then that one of the most famous critics in America and all over the world, Vito Morello made a tweet.

This particular tweet of his got a big response.

Vito was an old man in his 70s and was someone who had closely monitored the changing industry of Hollywood since the 60s.

He had co-authored a lot of books from famous celebrities and his voice was one of importance in the film fraternity.

The reason why his tweet got a heated response was because Vito wasn't known for reviewing or talking about every movie in this age. His health had become a major issue for him, so he had already semi-retired as a critic.

On top of that, his tweet was not about just any movie.

The post was about [Disconnected], the movie that had just flopped.

It was a long tweet but had some very interesting information.

<Just yesterday, I watched a pretty good movie after a long time. [Disconnected] felt like a movie which would be remembered for a long time for the writing and tight screenplay that never drags. Every scene is just enough and even the scenes which are there to give the audience a better understanding of the characters are kept short. The direction and acting really shines and the idea of accidental billionaires and the price of greed really appeals to me a lot. The best scene is still kept for the climax and it just satisfied me because it was totally worth it.>

When people read that tweet, they were surprised and confused.

Many of them even thought that it was a paid tweet. Critics being biased was not a surprising thing but it still baffled Vito's followers.

The old man was someone who had repeatedly talked about how he had never made friends in the industry to be unbiased. He believed in judging the art rather than the artist and he was well respected for that.

Someone like that doing a paid tweet was almost impossible.

Moreover, the tweet was not for a movie that was going to be released next week. It was about a movie that had already been released and flopped. Did that mean Vito actually liked the movie?

Was the audience too dumb to appreciate a good movie?

As people wondered about it, more and more critics started releasing their reviews on [Disconnected] and all of them were positive.

These also included critics who had bashed the movie before.

One of them was John Longbottom aka @Criticye who was very disappointed after watching [Disconnected]. He had only given it 3 stars out of 10 due to the massive disappointment he had felt.

But now, his latest review gave the movie a 8.5 out of 10.

<[Disconnected] is probably one of the best movies to come out this year. It's no action movie and the drama is not the intense kind, barring a few scenes but the engaging screenplay and gripping narrative makes it one of the better to watch. Aiden Silvereye as Andrew Kingston was phenomenal, especially in the climax.>

Seeing that review, a lot of people wondered if there was actually some sort of prank that the critics were doing.

@Criticye had just roasted the same movie three weeks ago and now he was praising it like he can't get enough of it. A lot of people in the comments asked whether he had accidentally written [Disconnected] in the title and was reviewing some other movie.

By the review, it actually felt like he was talking about another movie in itself.

One by one, famous magazines like Vanity, Hollywood Weekly, The Weekend Tribunal and The Box started releasing good reviews about [Disconnected]. Even the harshest of critics gave a good rating to it.

All of this made people very confused.

They didn't know what was going on.

It was then that Zetflix made another post about [Disconnected] and revealed that on 29th May, the director's cut of the movie was going to be on the streaming platform.

They also revealed that earlier, a test screening was held for different critics for the director's cut and posted a few positive reviews alongside the poster.

Only after that people realised what was going on.

All the reviews were of the director's cut and not for the version that had been released in the theatre. At the same time, people became curious.

The reviews of the theatrical version and the director's cut were too different. It was really like they were very different movies.

For a while, people thought that Zetflix was just trying to create a perception that the director's cut was a far superior version by getting the critics to give out positive reviews.

But a famous Sparrow user by the name of 'Dunphy Dad' posted a tweet about it, giving out his opinion on the matter.

He tweeted, "I don't think Zetflix is trying to create a wrong perception. Hear me out, they are a billion dollar platform and spend more than 500 million dollars on new shows every year as well they produce new shows and movies every month. Why will they pay off so many reputed critics for a movie that flopped hard? It just doesn't make sense. Anyway, I feel like the director's cut is surely going to be different than the version released in the theatres."

Agreeing with 'Dunphy Dad' tweet, a MeTuber by the name of 'Cinema Guy' that makes content on the production side of the filmmaking also tweeted about the same topic.

He wrote, "If people don't know, post production is one of the most important aspects of filmmaking. It could literally change a comedy movie to a horror one by the use of colour palette and background music. A director's cut is the version of the movie that the director imagined in his head. Studios normally edit it further to suit themselves but a lot of times, a director's cut could be way better. I think that's the case with [Disconnected]. Jesse Ross made a tweet about it too. Things probably weren't well between Black Line Cinema and him."

A lot of people agreed with his tweet. Jesse Ross did speak out about it and although it didn't straight up take names, everyone could guess who he was talking about.

Going by the way the movie had performed at the box office, he wasn't wrong either.

But the question was whether the director's cut was actually that good.

The reviews were positive but the audience was bound to be skeptical. The good thing was that they weren't releasing it in the theatres again.

A streaming platform was very accessible and one could just watch the movie in their home at any time. Moreover, if it was really the same as the theatrical version with a few tweaks, they could just stop it at any moment.

Due to that, a lot of people suddenly got interested in a flop movie.

***

Days went by and [Disconnected] was totally out of theatres around the world. Anyway, the focus had shifted to the director's cut that was going to be released on Zetflix.

To promote it, Zetflix asked the cast members and the director to do interviews for their MeTube channel and talk about their experiences while filming the movie. The cast was fine with it as one by one, all of them watched the director's cut.

It has restored their faith in the movie and they wanted it to at least gain an audience on Zetflix.

Out of all of them, only Seth Douglas refused to take part in the interview and promotional content, citing reasons that he didn't want anything to do with the movie.

Jesse was actually very happy about it as he blamed Seth a lot too for the failure at the box office. If not for him wanting to get the most attention in the movie, SGA wouldn't have been so tyrannical.

At the same time, Aiden was also thinking of a few things.

The months of April and May had become a big change in his life as he lost out on the Oscars and his movie flopped.

Reasons could be a lot but blaming them was just the easiest route. He felt like if he just dismissed them as things out of his control, then the same things would happen again and again.

Due to that, he became a bit more serious and calculative about his career.

If he had more power and was a bigger star, then SGA wouldn't have cut down so many of his scenes and he would actually have the power to give his opinion on the movie rather than just being a paid actor that could be replaced at any moment.

At the same time, he decided that he needed to be more careful while selecting projects.

In the industry, there was no saying which project was going to be successful but Aiden was different. He had skills that were almost like superpowers.

He knew which was a good script and which wasn't.

There were a lot more components to a successful movie but a good script was basic.

That's why he needed to rely on it more and try to only work with people that won't sabotage a project for their own interest.

These types of thoughts flowed regularly in Aiden's mind.

The flop had clearly affected him.

...