HWI 518

Hollywood What If Chapter 518

It was true that Marvel Studio was owned by News Corporation but most of its business was strongly related and dependent on 20th Century Fox.

In fact, after Kazir signed a contract that he would lead the creation of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, News Corporation slowly sold the shares of Marvel to 20th Century Fox.

20th Century Fox saw this as an opportunity so they acquired shares of the company. They now own around 15% of Marvel Entertainment. As for Grey Pictures, to be precise, Kazir also had shares of Marvel. It was 6%, he bought it.

Marvel Comics and Marvel Studio were under the whole company called Marvel Entertainment, Kazir and 20th Century Fox now had shares of the company.

Actually, Kazir was begged by the management to buy shares of the company as they were afraid that Kazir would leave the project if he didn't get enough benefits... So yeah, they had to convince the director to buy shares so that Kazir would work hard to make the company successful.

Kazir happily agreed. Most of the shares were privately owned and now he had a chance to buy them. Now that he has a chance to buy them, he might as well take advantage of their goodwill... He knew that Marvel Entertainment's worth would skyrocket a decade from now.

News Corporation slowly let go of Marvel since they focus more on media-related stuff. Of course, they still hold substantial shares. Rupert Murdoch was the major shareholder of Marvel.

Anyway, because of these benefits and selfish reasons, some people wanted to include some of their friends and acquaintances in this upcoming Cinematic Universe. One of these outcomes was Terrence Howard.

Kazir fought for Don Cheadle but some people didn't like that, so Terrence was cast... For a salary of more than $2 million. In Kazir's opinion, it was not worth it.

Iron Man was just the start of their massive Cinematic Universe and they couldn't afford to spend a huge amount of money on the cast. That's why Kazir preferred Don Cheadle because he was less expensive but a worthy casting because Don was a great actor, he excelled in his role.

If there was great news, it was the fact that Mark Ruffalo was cast as Bruce Banner in The Incredible Hulk. This change would help them a lot in the future. Kazir knew how important this change was... He was the only one who knew about the original MCU.

'If the fans in the original timeline heard of what I did, they will probably be happy since I correctly connected The Incredible Hulk to the MCU.'

He recalled that when he first watched The Avengers, he was confused if Mark Ruffalo's Hulk was The Incredible Hulk. The actor was different!! Even the kids were confused.

At that time, he hoped that they would have kept the original cast, which was Edward Norton... But Kazir changed his mind, Mark Ruffalo was easier to work with than Edward Norton.

Kazir fixed a problem that only he knew... He didn't receive thanks from the people as they were oblivious to that fact.

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Viggo Mortensen waved his hands while people were cheering his name. He was in Australia. His name was quite famous in this region because of The Lord Of The Rings. Viggo Mortensen was part of the cast of LOTR, he was Aragorn. Lord Of The Rings was filmed in New Zealand, a neighboring country of Australia.

Because Lord Of The Rings was famous in Australia, Viggo Mortensen received strong support while promoting his new movie, John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum.

Viggo's career had a rise up after starring in this franchise. Even now, he was thankful that Director Grey cast him to be John Wick. He admitted that he was grateful for that fact, especially when he heard that Harrison Ford also auditioned for the role. He knew damn well that he couldn't defeat Harrison Ford... Even now, the veteran is still more famous than him.

After John Wick, Viggo starred in Lord Of The Rings as Aragorn and it was a huge success.

After that, Viggo starred in movies but he had to admit that his peak performances were probably John Wick and Aragorn. Lately, Viggo has been trying to do drama movies. He wanted to stay away from action movies.

Despite getting tired of action movies, he admitted that the pay was not bad, especially in his role as John Wick.

His salary in John Wick: Chapter 3 was $17 million. Currently, this was the biggest salary he ever got. So even though he was tired of doing action movies, he had no intention of dropping the mantle of John Wick since this was his way to maintain his popularity plus the salary was huge.

Sometimes he was curious why Liam Neeson let go of his role. Based on Bryan Mills' popularity, Grey Pictures had no problem extending the contract and paying him top dollars. Unfortunately, Liam Neeson said that he was done and planned to work on new projects away from CCU.

While people were cheering on him as he entered the car, his assistant passed him a newspaper. Viggo waved his hand for the last time before leaving the cinema.

He looked at the newspaper and smiled when he saw that John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum grossed $582 million worldwide. Of course, he was happy that his movie was successful; it meant more status for him.

If there was one thing he regretted, he couldn't make a cut of the box office. In the next movie, Viggo and his team would try to make a box office share deal. It didn't matter if it was a 5% North American box share or smaller; that amount was still huge.

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[Merry Christmas. In the next chapter, I'll tackle Kazir's next project which is Ninja Assassin.]