Chapter - 231

[Title : Multiverse] 

….

–BBC News: “Regal Wants to Continue His Dictatorship on the Sets - No Place for Superstars”

–Insider Info: “The Superstar Who Said ‘I Am Looking Forward to Working with Regal’ Was Replaced by a Complete Unknown”

–Variety: “Regal Rejects A-Listers, Says Fame ‘Pollutes the Performance’”

–The Hollywood Reporter: “Industry Shaken as Regal Declares: ‘I Don’t Need Stars. I Make Them’”

–Deadline: “Dozens of Celebs Audition, Regal Picks the Guy From the Café”

–Variety: “Regal Turns Down Oscar Winner, Says He Wants ‘Uncorrupted Souls’”

–The Guardian: “Is Regal Building an Empire of Nobodies? Studios Are Nervous”

–IndieWire: “Regal’s ‘No-Stars Policy’ Sparks Fury in Hollywood Circles”

….

These were the headlines that exploded across the industry the moment Regal announced his next collaboration would be with RDJ - still a relatively unknown face.

….

Superstars.

In any field, they are the rarest kind of people - the sort most of us might glimpse once in our lifetime.

Twice, if fortune really smiles on you.

And yet Regal Seraphsail - the wunderkind director who had already delivered a billion-dollar film - had never worked with a single one.

A superstar director joining forces with a superstar actor was the kind of dream that could make any cinephile mortgage their house just to see the result.

But when Regal’s new announcement came out… all those dreams evaporated.

Fans of A-list actors were livid.

To be fair, their hopes weren’t baseless.

Over the past week, paparazzi had caught Regal meeting several big names after returning from Japan.

In fact, it was those very actors’ agencies who orchestrated the “leaks.”

Their strategy was obvious - box Regal in.

Make the public expect their stars in his next film.

And finally force him to drop RDJ and cast their client instead.

If he didn’t?

Face an avalanche of backlash from their fanbases and the media.

But Regal couldn’t care less about games like that.

Well - he wouldn’t have, if the backlash hadn’t gotten so vicious.

So, for the first time, he released a statement:

–“It was never about stardom or lack of talent, it has always been about actors who fit the vision of my characters.”

It calmed the neutral crowd, but die-hard fandoms weren’t satisfied.

So he released another:

–“It is true that I met a few respected actors, and had some interesting discussions. But none of them were about my current project, because the actors for it were already locked.”

–“Still, our conversations weren’t for nothing. We are open to future collaborations. So I would like to ask my fellow cinephiles to look forward to that.”

This time, the storm finally began to die down.

….

Even so, Regal remained uneasy.

Something about the outrage felt… manufactured.

It wasn’t as though news of him casting RDJ had dropped out of nowhere. Insiders had been whispering about it for a month already.

Yet, the backlash had only erupted now - like someone had flicked a switch.

It couldn’t have been organic.

Someone was pulling the strings.

And doing it very cleverly.

Regal, with the advantage of knowing the future, could see it for what it was:

A coordinated PR attack.

Not just a handful of trolls - this would have taken hundreds of thousands of fake accounts, amplifying false narratives, seeding outrage in fan communities.

A whole covert machine.

…Maybe it’s time I build my own PR team.

Regal had worked with publicists before, plenty of times, in fact, but they had always been tied to individual films, not to him as a person.

Once a project wrapped, those teams would disband, their focus fading along with the end credits.

The fiasco during the Oscars and Golden Globes had already been a wake-up call… and now, this was the second warning.

It was something he had considered for months and kept postponing out of distaste for the idea.

But looking at this… he didn’t really have a choice anymore.

Knowing what he knew about the future power of PR, it wasn’t just an investment.

It was a necessity.

Decision made, Regal simply called Samantha, told her to make it happen–

–and then turned his focus to the next thing.

….

Regal’s first concern wasn’t diving straight into the script for [Iron Man].

Sure, writing it would be a challenge of its own, but if anyone asked him, he would say the story didn’t need an overhaul.

The core plot, the spine of the character, was already solid.

All it really required was the subtle layering of his voice, his fingerprints in the dialogue and structure, and the quiet threads that would tie it into the larger future he had in mind.

So before touching the script, there was something far more important he had to build first.

He needed to lay the foundation for something far larger - the multiverse he had been quietly planning in the background.

A daring tapestry that would weave together the mythologies of both: Marvel and DC.

MDC.

The very first rule he carved into stone was simple, yet vital:

Marvel and DC characters could never coexist on the same planet.

They had to belong to separate Earths - parallel realities spinning side by side like twin orbs in the void.

Because-

DC characters are godlike compared to Marvel’s mostly human-scale heroes.

- Superman can hear every scream on the planet and move planets.

- Batman has near-limitless resources and contingency plans for every super.

- The Flash can rewrite timelines just by running.

In contrast, most Marvel heroes like - despite having a god as Thor, and also Spider-Man, Daredevil, Punisher, Hawkeye - they still operate on street or city scale.

So if they lived on the same Earth:

- Why would Spider-Man be needed at all if Superman exists in the same world?

- Why would the Avengers struggle against alien invasions if the Justice League could end them in five minutes?

So having Marvel and DC in different Earth’s is the only way to protect their identities, their histories, their tone.

Forcing them to share a single world would collapse everything he wanted to build.

Their moral compasses were forged in entirely different fires:

- Marvel’s heroes were human first, gods second.

- DC’s were gods pretending to be human.

Colliding those natures on one planet would feel like oil and water forced into a single glass.

So, Regal began drafting the multiverse chart on a huge whiteboard in his study, each marker stroke deliberate:

Earth-M – Home of the Marvel characters. Modern, flawed, messy, full of grit and consequence. A place where powers were accidents, burdens, and people wore masks out of necessity.

Earth-D – Home of the DC characters. Mythic, symbolic, towering, almost operatic. A world where heroes were legends in the flesh, each embodying ideals greater than themselves.

And between them, he drew a jagged crack of space - the Interstice, the infinite void that kept these realms apart yet allowed for rare, reality-bending collisions when the stakes demanded it.

As he stepped back from the board, arms crossed, he exhaled slowly.

This was the first brick.

The boundaries had to be airtight or everything else would collapse later.

He knew the temptation studios would have - to throw Batman and Spider-Man in a room together just for spectacle - but if that happened too early, it would poison the entire narrative.

He muttered under his breath, almost like a mantra.

“Build worlds first… cross them later.”

Then he sat down at his desk and opened a leather-bound notebook marked:

MULTIVERSE CODEX - Draft 0.1.

Here, he began mapping out not just the geography of each Earth but their timelines, tone, visual palettes, even their underlying physics.

Earth-M would follow a grounded cinematic realism: scarred knuckles, cracked helmets, bruised egos.

Earth-D would be heightened, almost dreamlike: operatic lighting, bold color palettes, cityscapes like mythic thrones.

Even the way sound carried would differ - Marvel’s world would echo like back-alley concrete, DC’s like cathedral stone.

Hours passed unnoticed, his pen scratched on.

He wasn’t writing scripts yet - he was writing laws of existence.

By midnight, he had filled half the notebook and drawn up a primitive multiverse timeline showing how the two Earths would age separately.

One day, they might brush against each other through collapsing rifts or cosmic crises… but not now.

Not until both worlds could stand tall on their own feet.

Only then would the true multiverse begin.

…

Regal drummed the pen against the desk, eyes tracing the tangled lattice of timelines he had sketched out like veins across paper.

The architecture of his multiverse was finally taking shape - fragile, sprawling, but there was still nothing holding it together.

No heartbeat.

Every world needed one.

Not just a mascot or the biggest moneymaker, but the figure who embodied its essence, the soul audiences would unconsciously tie to that Earth.

If he got that wrong, the tone of an entire universe could collapse like wet scaffolding.

His gaze slid down the column marked Earth-M (Marvel).

So many contenders.

Spider-Man… endlessly relatable, endlessly human - but too central, too precious to spend at the foundation. He needed to save him for later, let him become the soul of Marvel in time, not its opening act.

Wolverine… magnetic, feral, intoxicating - but his chaos would taint the tone of everything around him. Marvel couldn’t begin with a snarl.

Captain America… unshakable, righteous, clean as white paint. The symbol of everything old-world and idealistic. He could lead armies and inspire loyalty, yes. He once stood alone against Thanos himself.

But that same unwavering morality made him brittle as a starting point. There was no growth in starting from perfection.

Regal’s pen hovered… then circled a name.

Tony Stark.

Iron Man.

The decision clicked into place with a quiet inevitability.

A flawed man who built himself into something greater.

Human arrogance, human fear, human redemption.

Not a chosen one.

Just a broken man who forged his way forward, and paid the price with his life.

Perfect.

Earth-M would be born through the eyes of a man who thought he ruled the world, only to realize he didn’t even own himself.

A story of building armor… and learning how to take it off.

Regal jotted it beneath Stark’s name, the ink biting deep into the page:

“Anchor — Tech, hubris, humanity. Starts grounded → grows cosmic.”

….

Then his pen drifted to the column marked Earth-D (DC).

DC had always felt older than humanity itself, like ancient scripture written before man ever learned to speak.

It didn’t need a survivor clawing his way up from rubble.

It needed a symbol.

A living myth - someone who could command reverence and unease in the same breath.

Two names stood like pillars above the rest: Batman and Superman.

Batman was mortal will sharpened into vengeance, the embodiment of obsession.

A man who chose to become more than flesh and fear.

But if Regal began here, audiences might mistake DC for a world of only shadows, paranoia, and bloodstained rooftops.

It would narrow a cosmos meant to feel cathedral-wide.

Regal wanted grandeur.

He wanted awe.

He wanted morality set in motion like celestial mechanics.

That meant it had to be Superman.

The first and purest myth.

The sun-god who walks among men.

The idea of goodness made flesh.

Regal’s pen paused on the name as his thoughts sank deeper than costumes or powers.

The emotional gravity this figure carried, the mythic warmth he radiated even when silent.

If Iron Man represented what man could become, then Superman would stand for what man should aspire to be.

Regal wrote, the letters almost ceremonial:

“Anchor — Myth, hope, morality. Starts mythic → becomes grounded.”

The contrast struck him as perfect.

Marvel would claw its way from dirt to the stars.

DC would descend from the heavens to the earth.

Two arcs, moving in opposite directions.

Two gravitational poles, pulling the Multiverse into balance.

.

….

[To be continued…]

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