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Chapter 10: Salary

  Chapter Ten: Piecework

  It was a day in early August, when Ryan took over the phone from Nicole, he scratched his head, he really couldn't think of what that fat guy wanted to do with him, could it be that Miramax was so idle, or did Harvey Weinstein have a brain spasm and want to chat with this little devil about the future?

  "Hello, Harvey." The current Mira Max didn't have the same confidence as later on. This pair of brothers, although rustic, still maintained a due closeness to those who could create value for themselves. "Right, Patrick has already arrived and brought the contract too. Conditions? Of course, satisfactory, no problem."

  "What? No, no, no, Harvey, I'm not trying to interfere with your decision. I may have grown up in LA, but isn't Philadelphia one of the oldest cities in North America? Don't you think it would be more convincing to set the film's location in Philly?"

  When Ryan heard Harvey Weinstein say he wanted to move the location shoot to Los Angeles, even though he knew his voice was light and insignificant, he couldn't help but raise an objection, fortunately before Harvey Weinstein had begun to swell up with pride, he quickly dispelled that idea.

  "Alright, then. Wait, Harvey, I have a question, has the director and male lead been confirmed?" Hearing the name coming from the receiver, Ryan subconsciously scratched his face, "David Fincher? Is he the one who directed Madonna's MV?"

  After getting a positive answer, Ryan hung up the phone. Well! Another Hollywood celebrity was swatted by this big butterfly and had his life trajectory deflected.

  "Ryan, what's it like acting out your own script?" asked Ms. Kim, sipping her coffee with a smile.

  Ryan rolled his eyes, as if saying "Are you kidding me?", "Patrick, the movie hasn't even started filming yet, how would I know what it's like?"

  "Ryan, come here." Nicole spoke up, pointing to the two contracts on the table in front of her. "These are the script contract and your actor contract, I've already signed them, now it's your turn."

  Jin Silie, who was sitting on the other side, explained, "In terms of the script, $50,000 has not changed, but there are some minor flaws in the script that need to be revised."

  "I understand."

  "As for the actor, Harvey should have called you earlier. The movie won't start filming until the end of next month. Although you're playing one of the three most important roles, you're a newcomer with no previous work, and Miramax has lowballed your salary to $150,000."

  "What's more?" Ryan still remembered what he had instructed his female economist about.

  "Of course, the reason why the pay is being pressed so low is mainly because of those conditions you put forward." The female economist sighed, she really couldn't understand Ryan's fanciful thinking. "The contract has already stated that if this movie's North American box office exceeds $250 million, you and Nicole will each have a 1% share of the box office revenue."

  "Whoa!" Ryan exclaimed excitedly, he could totally imagine the look on Harvey Weinstein's face when the movie was released.

  "Don't be too happy, because for the same reason, Nicole only got a salary of $1.5 million."

  The female agent directly poured a basin of cold water, she was very clear that Mira Max would add such clauses to the contract. One is that the box office of the movie will not reach this astronomical figure at all, and the other is to reduce the remuneration for the film by lowering the cost, in order to save a considerable amount of expenditure for the financially strapped company.

  In the eyes of those seasoned filmmakers, "The Sixth Sense" is indeed an excellent story and script. If handled well, it's possible to achieve hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars in North American box office sales. But what concept is $250 million in North American box office sales? Only "Star Wars" and "Jaws" have achieved this feat in history. Is a thriller-disguised family ethics film also capable of achieving such success? Don't be kidding.

  It was based on immediate benefits that Miramax would seemingly generously offer this contract.

  Of course, Ms. Jin also played a crucial role in this, although it seemed to reduce her income, but as an intelligent person, she naturally thought that Ryan's value lay more in writing, which was the key to her profit.

  The "Sixth Sense" thing has temporarily come to an end. Unlike Nicole, who needs to study the script and characters, he is the author of the script. In his previous life, he had watched the original movie more than a dozen times, and thanks to his super strong memory in this life, those scenes were like they were carved into his mind, so there was no need to study at all.

  That's not entirely correct, after dinner and during their daily routine exercises and walks, he would also discuss the script with Nicole, especially the interactions between the two characters, his feelings and understanding of the film were much deeper, some perspectives naturally influenced Nicole, which was somewhat helpful for future filming.

  Just as Nicole once complained, Ryan has almost no friends. As someone who experienced online baptism in his previous life, he more or less has some introverted properties. Compared to the Australian beauty who likes excitement and socializing, he is now much quieter and more regular in his daily life.

  Every morning and evening were his and Nicole's regular exercise time, after breakfast was writing, every afternoon would take out some time to practice musical instruments, sometimes inspiration came, and even composed a simple tune, filled with some English lyrics, using a childish voice to disturb Nicole, Ms. Kidman and the neighbors living in the same building.

  After dinner, he would watch TV and news for a while, often debating with Nicole on current events, using his more than 20 years of experience to render the cool beauty speechless. Occasionally, when he was refuted, he would pout and use his age privilege until Nicole surrendered.

  Can't help but say, Nicole is a bit too **doting on him**, making Ryan more and more unable to restrain himself in front of her.

  Of course, most of the evening was still spent writing. Since "The Sixth Sense" has found a new home, Rain naturally wants to make preparations for the next step and even further ahead. With the experience of writing the script for "The Sixth Sense", he gained some insights.

  For Ryan, who has a clear picture in his mind, building a script is simpler and faster than adapting after gaining enough experience. The script rarely requires such elaborate language and complex descriptions, which makes it more handy for him. Moreover, the creative ideas suitable for his age group have been taken by him long ago, so those film companies that still want to make these movies can only go and talk to Ms. Jin slowly.

  Although he doesn't mind being seen as a bit of an oddity, Ryan also doesn't want to be too shocking or unconventional. In his current mindset, as long as those few movies with good word-of-mouth and high box office each year are made by him, that's enough; this way, he can earn a lot of money and give himself a halo.

  In his past life, he was just an ordinary person, if there's anything special about him, it's because of his profession and hobbies, having watched far more movies than the average person. In this life, he started as a helpless orphan, even with some delusional dreams to achieve, sometimes being greedy, but without the grand ambitions that reborn people are said to have.

  What he wants is actually very simple, to fulfill his dreams of past and present lives, and help those he likes and loves deeply.

  Unless the world ends or the red empire is about to collapse and takes the whole world with it to grow mushrooms, Nicole will knock on the door every day a few minutes after half past ten to remind him to sleep. Even in the first year she adopted him, Nicole would often stay by his side at night.

  This is a typical day in Ryan's life for years, even when he was at school, he would only do what he wanted to do in class and was notorious for it. At first, the school had approached Nicole about it, but after his grades consistently came back as A's, they gradually shut up about it.

  For Rhine, who had experienced cruel education in his previous life, the knowledge taught by Western elementary schools was simply too childish. Of course, it's not all bad, for example, they won't teach kids to love certain ideologies as soon as they enter school. The first thing to learn when entering school is safety rules and how to protect oneself, which are also the most important things in daily teaching.

  The sweltering August passed by in a flash, and at the end of the month, Nicole reconnected with Ryan to a primary school, just as a transfer student. Before entering school, she took a test and was smoothly assigned to the third grade. Fortunately, Ryan had always been indifferent to going to school, if it weren't for the fear of violating the law, he wouldn't have attended this damn American elementary school.

  Of course, he just needs to get through the compulsory education age group and he won't waste his time reading university if there's no accident.

  Within a month, Ryan sorted out the outlines and main lines of two movie scripts, and drew some setting drafts. Although he wrote some content and bridges, music and other things distracted him from concentrating on the scripts, otherwise they wouldn't still be just frameworks now.

  Because Nikki had previously acted in mostly art-house films, except for a few limited ones, the impression was not particularly deep. Among the two scripts, one belonged to the romantic comedy genre that was popular in the 90s, which Ryan had specially prepared for her. However, such a romance movie coming from a ten-year-old's hands was somewhat absurd.

  Forget it, let's wait for a while, after "The Sixth Sense" is released, then we'll talk about it again. By that time, I will be one year older and have more persuasive power. Even if some people still gossip, just ignore them.

  Besides, being a boy rather than a girl, this society's acceptance of male geniuses is much stronger than that of females.

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