Owen closed the submissions for Curve on Backstage just forty-eight hours after posting the casting call on his Instagram story.
At first, he had planned to keep it open for five to seven days.
However, when he saw the flood of interested actresses, he realized it would be best to close it as soon as possible.
There were already too many.
By the time he deactivated the listing, he and Curry had more than eight hundred Backstage profiles to review, and that did not include the twenty-seven actresses who had come through representatives.
Several belonged to major agencies such as CAA, Gersh, UTA, and other well-known companies within the industry.
Although that did not mean they were major stars.
They were not famous actresses or names capable of carrying a studio film. Most were young performers with a few credits in independent films, television, or supporting roles, represented by agents who still managed developing talent.
Even so, they had real professional experience.
Curry did not seem particularly surprised when Owen told him the numbers.
In truth, he had already seen it coming.
That was why he had hesitated during the meeting when Owen mentioned that he planned to post an open casting call on Backstage.
Second Take Films might have existed for less than three years, but its reach was enormous. It had everything an actor or actress wanted: massive exposure with millions of views, prestige, the possibility of awards, and the chance to become known not only to a huge general audience but also to people in the industry who watched everything Owen released.
Owen had slightly underestimated the weight of his own brand.
He had thought of Curve as a ten-minute short film.
For hundreds of aspiring actresses, however, it was the opportunity to star in the next project from one of the most visible independent production companies of the moment.
Faced with such an enormous number of submissions, Owen had no choice but to hire a casting director and several assistants.
If he and Curry tried to personally review more than eight hundred profiles, résumés, and introduction videos, they would lose entire days before even reaching the first auditions.
The casting team would handle the initial screening.
They would review ages, availability, experience, the quality of the submitted materials, and which profiles genuinely came close to the protagonist they were looking for. Afterward, they would prepare a much smaller selection so Owen and Curry could evaluate them carefully.
The actresses represented by agencies would enter at a slightly more advanced stage of the process.
They would not receive the role automatically or avoid a real audition, but they would not have to go through exactly the same initial screening as the hundreds of profiles submitted through Backstage.
Owen considered that the most reasonable approach.
Those actresses had spent years working in the industry, had already passed professional selection processes, and had verifiable credits. Forcing them to compete from the very first step within a group of more than eight hundred submissions would have been impractical and, in a way, unfair.
Their agents would send résumés, previous scenes, and professional materials directly to the casting director.
If they suited the character, they would advance to the audition round alongside the best candidates selected from Backstage.
From that point onward, they would all have to compete against one another.
On Wednesday, August 23, the casting director and his assistants began working through the submissions.
By the end of the day, they informed Owen that they had reduced the list to around two hundred and eighty candidates who deserved a more careful review.
Owen left that part of the process in their hands.
That was what he had hired them for.
While Curry collaborated with the casting director and began reviewing the most promising profiles, Owen focused on the rest of the production: constructing the curved structure, renting the studio, and hiring the technical crew.
By Friday, he had practically finalized the entire crew.
They did not need many people. Curve would be a ten-minute short film, shot in a controlled space, with only one actress in front of the camera throughout the entire story.
Owen already had people he trusted.
Among them, Tyler and Eric would handle sound and lighting. Both could run their respective departments without difficulty.
They had worked on Paranormal Activity, Paperman, both the short and feature-length versions of Lights Out, and several Second Take Films projects. For a shoot like that one, their experience was more than enough.
Especially because horror was the genre they had specialized in the most.
Then he hired Oliver, Curry's friend. Did he have experience? Very little, only on The Chair, but that was enough for him to work as one of the camera assistants.
Then he hired a director of photography, makeup personnel, and a few additional technicians.
Construction of the structure moved forward at the same time.
Curry's design had served as the foundation, although a specialized company had to turn his drawings into actual blueprints.
Between the studio rental, construction, salaries, equipment, transportation, and postproduction, Owen estimated that the short film would end up costing between sixty and seventy-five thousand dollars.
Without a doubt, his most expensive short film to date.
"It's great that everything is moving along well," Matt commented.
He was sitting across from Owen's desk in the Second Take Films offices, listening to the summary of the week.
He held a flask in one hand and took a small sip before continuing, "So there are eighty-five candidates left. Did any of them catch your attention?"
Owen set aside the documents he had been reading and shook his head, "The best ones from Backstage have already sent in their self-tapes and the actresses submitted by agencies moved on to the next round, but I still haven't watched any full auditions. Curry is handling that with the casting director."
There were still too many profiles and videos for Owen to start reviewing them personally.
The casting team had already sent him a list of twenty-five standout candidates. Owen had skimmed through a few names and reviewed their résumés, but he preferred to wait until Curry narrowed the selection down even further.
He would leave the choice of the lead actress to the director.
"There were even news articles about the short," Matt said with a small smile.
That had been inevitable.
Posting an open casting call on Backstage meant indirectly announcing that Second Take Films was preparing a new project.
Thousands of actresses, agents, and industry professionals could see the listing. It was impossible to keep it secret.
Besides, the channel's next short film had been anticipated for months. Second Take Films had been built primarily around that format, and it had been quite some time since it had released a new one.
"I graduated in marketing," Owen replied with a small, sarcastic smile.
The casting call had served as an initial campaign without him having to pay anything.
It had begun building anticipation around Curve long before its release.
Owen had expected some reaction.
What he had not anticipated was finding articles in Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, and other well-known outlets, along with thousands of conversations on social media trying to figure out what the short film was about.
Matt took another drink.
Owen looked at the flask, "Drinking this early?" he asked, "Don't tell me you have whiskey or vodka in there."
Matt closed the cap and shook his head, "It's beer."
Owen stared at him in silence.
"It wouldn't look good to walk around the offices with a can in my hand," Matt explained.
"Because being seen with a flask looks much better, right?" Owen replied.
Matt laughed, "I can put the flask away."
He slipped it into one of the inner pockets of his jacket, "The only person who sees it is someone I don't mind seeing it. A beer can doesn't fit in there," he added.
Owen tilted his head slightly.
For some reason, the explanation made a certain amount of sense.
At least he felt relieved to know that Matt was not drinking whiskey or vodka at five in the afternoon.
It was not as though he was working, either.
He had stopped by the offices solely to talk to Owen. He did not have an editing session, a meeting, or any pending task that day.
When he was actually working, Matt could be the most professional of them all.
At that moment, he simply had nothing better to do.
"How are the days off treating you?" Owen asked, changing the subject.
Matt had finished editing Lights Out in early August. Since then, he had not accepted any other work or actively searched for a new film to direct.
He had been involved in the entire process of Lights Out, from preproduction to postproduction, which had taken up several months.
He deserved the break.
Besides, it was not as though his schedule were completely empty. Universal had already secured the film's distribution and, once the promotional campaign began, he would have to take part in interviews, the festival, premieres, and all the usual obligations of a director.
For now, however, he could afford not to do much.
"It's strange… you know?" Matt replied, searching for the right words, "But it's nice. It feels like when summer vacation finally started back in school."
Ever since he signed on to direct Paranormal Activity, he had barely had time to stop.
First came that film.
Then came the Second Take Films shorts, the blogs, different festivals, and finally Lights Out.
Since May 2022, he had not had a break as long as this one.
That was why the feeling was so strange.
"Well…" Owen murmured.
He reached out, opened the right-hand drawer of his desk, and pulled out a bound screenplay, "If you're bored, here you go."
He dropped it in front of Matt.
The pages struck the wood with a dull thud.
Matt's eyes lit up immediately.
He grabbed the screenplay with both hands and lifted it with remarkable speed, "You finally finished the Chronicle script!"
Suddenly, his vacation no longer mattered.
At last, he held in his hands the project he had been waiting for. The film with which he and Owen planned to "get revenge" on DC.
Or rather, Owen's revenge for being rejected for Superman.
"Yes and no," Owen replied.
Matt stopped looking at the cover and raised his gaze, "What do you mean?"
"It's eighty-nine pages long. That would give us an approximate runtime of one hour and twenty-nine minutes," Owen explained, "It could work as it is, but I'm not sure it's the best possible version."
A film screenplay was usually calculated according to a fairly simple rule: one page equaled approximately one minute of screen time.
Eighty-nine pages placed Chronicle right at the lower end of what was typical for a feature film.
It was not too short for a theatrical release.
But almost.
Matt could not have known it, but the document he was holding was practically the finished version of the film Owen remembered from his previous life. The original story had run for eighty-nine minutes.
They could shoot it exactly as it was.
However, Owen believed they still had room to improve it.
They did not need to turn it into a three-hour film or add scenes simply to increase the runtime. But ten, fifteen, or even twenty additional minutes could give them space to develop the characters more effectively and give certain moments greater weight.
"This is a complete version," Owen continued, "It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. We could use it as it is. But I feel like we can still strengthen some parts."
Matt lowered his gaze back to the screenplay, this time paying closer attention.
Owen began explaining his doubts.
Andrew was the protagonist. Then there were Mark and Steve, the other two boys Andrew's age who also gained powers.
The three of them carried the film, but he felt that Mark and Steve's arcs could be better.
Steve needed something more than being the popular, charismatic boy who served as a bridge between Andrew and Mark.
Mark, for his part, could be given greater depth and not simply be the typical good guy who wanted to do the right thing just because.
They could also devote a few additional scenes to the protagonist's family.
Andrew's mother had an important presence, but it was almost entirely limited to her illness. Owen believed they could portray the relationship between them more effectively.
The same was true of his father.
He did not intend to justify his behavior, but he did want to prevent him from seeming like nothing more than a violent figure placed there to make the protagonist suffer. A little more context could make him more human and, precisely because of that, more unpleasant.
Then there was the ending.
In the main version, the story ended with Andrew and Mark facing each other in the middle of the city. Cars lifted by telekinesis, police officers unable to control the situation, civilians fleeing, and increasingly widespread destruction that culminated in Andrew's death.
It worked.
It was spectacular, tragic, and brought the protagonist's descent to a close.
But Owen was not completely convinced.
He was concerned that it might end up resembling the usual conclusion of a superpower film too closely: two characters fighting in a city while everything around them was destroyed.
That was why he had added a second possibility. A route B.
A series of notes proposed moving the final confrontation to a forest and allowing Andrew to survive.
It was not simply a matter of changing the setting or preventing his death.
To reach that ending, they would have to rewrite several earlier parts.
Owen wanted Matt to read the complete eighty-nine-page version first.
Afterward, they could discuss which elements to add, which relationships needed more space, and which ending to choose.
They had room to add up to thirty pages without making the film excessively long.
"And there's still something else I haven't made up my mind about," Owen added.
Matt maintained a serious expression, waiting.
"In this version, the entire film is told as found footage. One hundred percent. But maybe we could use a hybrid structure and combine the characters' cameras with traditional cinematography."
That would also require major changes.
It would not be enough to film the same scenes from a different angle. They would have to decide when the film abandoned the found footage, which moments deserved a traditional camera, and how to prevent the two styles from seeming as though they belonged to different projects.
"I want your opinion on everything," Owen continued.
Matt nodded slowly, "I'll read it today."
His initial excitement had transformed into concentration.
It was strange to receive a screenplay from Owen that he himself described as incomplete.
Eighty-nine pages was an extremely advanced version. According to Owen's own words, they could film it exactly as it was and end up with a complete movie.
However, there seemed to be something about it that Owen was still not entirely convinced by.
He was not asking Matt to fix a disorganized draft.
He was handing him a functional film that he had doubts about, which was why he was asking him to review the screenplay and see whether they could find a way to turn it into a better movie.
It was a much heavier writing task than anything Matt had done on Lights Out.
"That's everything with Chronicle," Owen said, "But it isn't the only thing I have for you."
He opened the drawer again. This time, he pulled out something considerably less impressive.
It was, quite literally, two stapled sheets of paper.
Matt raised an eyebrow curiously and took the small document.
The cover had a simple title: First Instagram Sketch.
Matt looked up, "What is this?"
"My beginning as an Instagrammer," Owen replied with complete seriousness, "Read it."
Matt let out a brief laugh, remembering that Owen had mentioned the subject before, and opened the first page.
It did not take him long.
He remained silent for a moment before bursting out laughing.
"It's good," he admitted, "Your comedy is pretty underrated."
One-Minute Time Machine had already proven that Owen could write humor. The short worked because of its science-fiction concept, but also because of the pacing of the dialogue, the repetition, and the way the situation became increasingly funnier.
Now he was proving it again with those two pages.
His friend did not only know how to write dramas, romance, or horror films.
'Yes, my comedy...' Owen thought, but said nothing.
"Maya loves the Backstreet Boys," Matt added.
The short script would barely run for a little over a minute.
The scene showed a police officer trying to identify a murderer among five suspects. As part of a rather unconventional identification method, he forced all of them to sing I Want It That Way by the Backstreet Boys while a woman listened from the other side of the glass.
Owen remembered that scene from Brooklyn Nine-Nine perfectly.
It had been one of the most famous and memorable cold opens in the entire series.
However, the show did not exist here.
And since Owen doubted that he would recreate the entire series anytime soon, he had decided to take advantage of some of its best moments and turn them into short sketches for social media.
"I'll take care of the set and play the cop. Will you direct it?" Owen asked.
"Of course, man," Matt replied immediately.
Compared to everything they had filmed together, this would be simple.
It would also be quite fun.
Once they had the set and the actors, they could finish it in a single day without too much trouble.
The most complicated part would be finding a suitable interrogation room: the typical police-station space with the suspects lined up in front of the glass while the officer and the witness watched from the adjoining room.
As for the cast, they would need seven people.
Owen would play the police officer.
They also needed a woman looking for her brother's killer and five suspects.
That left six roles to fill.
Fortunately, they did not need to organize a casting call or begin a formal process.
Owen already knew enough people to handle it.
"I'll ask Maya," Matt said, "I'm sure she'll be thrilled to play the witness."
The combination of a comedy sketch and a Backstreet Boys song would be more than enough to convince her.
For the suspects, they could call Gaten and Caleb.
That would still leave three spots.
Joe was also a possibility. Owen had remained on good terms with him after filming Shut Up and Dance, although they were not close enough for Owen to assume he would accept without hesitation.
He could offer the other two roles to Curry and Cooper.
Neither of them was a professional actor in the traditional sense, but both had spent a long time performing comedy sketches on their YouTube channel.
In fact, they probably had more experience with that kind of content than with horror short films.
Owen doubted they would turn down the offer.
The script was short, creative, and funny.
Besides, the sketch would be posted on his personal Instagram account in front of more than twenty million followers.
He would not have to offer large salaries or prepare complicated contracts.
For all of them, it would be an entertaining afternoon, a collaboration between friends, and considerable exposure.
Matt looked down at the two sheets again, "This is going to work really well."
"I hope so. I don't want to start my career as an Instagrammer by failing with my first video," Owen said with a smile.
"Fail?" Matt repeated, looking at him as if he had just said something stupid, "It's practically impossible, man."
He held up the short script between two fingers.
The concept was excellent, the pacing worked, and the punchline was funny enough to stick in anyone's mind. That alone already gave them more than most of the videos posted on Instagram every day.
But, on top of that, they were not going to film it with a phone on a tripod or propped against a stack of books.
They would use professional cameras, lighting, and sound. They would have access to a real set and equipment easily worth more than a hundred thousand dollars.
And in front of the camera would be Owen, the Cannes-winning actor, accompanied by other professional performers and people used to filming sketches.
It was a completely unfair competition.
While most creators tried to stand out with a phone, a lamp, and a little luck, Owen was about to enter Instagram using all the resources of a film production company.
"You're going to compete against people filming in their bedrooms or houses with a ring light," Matt said, "You're going to show up with a professional set, cinema cameras, and professional actors. It's an abuse of power."
Owen let out a laugh, "True."
Matt was about to stand up when he remembered something, "What happened with Jenna?" he asked, narrowing his eyes, "Did she make a decision about The Weeknd thing?"
Owen had told him about the entire situation, "Yes," he replied.
Then he remained silent for a few seconds.
Matt watched him impatiently, "Come on. Tell me what she decided."
"She turned it down," Owen finally revealed.
Matt's expression froze for a moment. Then, an enormous smile spread across his face.
"Yes!" he celebrated, clenching his fist and pumping it in front of his chest.
Owen looked at him with amusement, "Were you really that worried she might agree to work with The Weeknd?"
It seemed Matt had taken the matter even more seriously than he had.
"Yes," Matt replied, calming down slightly, "I mean… it's The Weeknd."
He grimaced as though the name alone were enough to explain everything else.
Matt shared many of Owen's doubts, although his opinion was even harsher.
Both of them had seen The Idol at Cannes and knew some of what had happened during production. However, for Matt, the worst part had not only been the final result of the series.
It was what had happened behind the scenes.
A director had been removed after Abel rejected the original vision and demanded major changes. HBO and A24 had ultimately given in, allowing one of the most powerful figures within the project to impose his own creative direction.
To Matt, that was practically a nightmare.
As a director, few things seemed worse to him than working for months on a film or series only for a producer, a star, or anyone with enough influence to start interfering with every decision.
And, on top of that, being able to get the director fired if they refused to obey.
It did not matter how much money they offered.
Matt did not want a friend, in this case Jenna, anywhere near someone with that kind of track record.
Matt raised a hand toward Owen, "Come on. High five."
"I don't think this calls for a celebration," Owen said.
"Of course it does," Matt said, keeping his hand raised.
Owen sighed. Finally, he raised his own and slapped his friend's palm.
Matt smiled, satisfied.
Although he did not want to admit it with the same enthusiasm, Owen had also felt relieved when Jenna told him her decision.
He would have supported her if she had accepted.
He had already given her his opinion in a more reasonable way, apologized for his earlier reaction, and understood that the choice was hers.
But that did not mean he liked the project.
If Jenna had signed on, Owen would have had to listen to how the shoot was progressing, probably learn about problems on set and, if the film ended up receiving a response similar to The Idol, stand by her through the criticism, the memes, and all the negative attention.
He would even have had to attend the premiere and pretend to feel an enthusiasm that, in all likelihood, he would not have felt.
So yes.
He was also happy that she had turned it down.
"Are you leaving already?" Matt asked. It was barely five, and knowing his friend, that was early for him to leave the office on a weekday, even if it was Friday.
"Yes. I lost a game of Monopoly to Jenna yesterday, and now I have to cook," Owen replied.
Matt blinked, "You play Monopoly with only two people?"
"Yes," Owen replied as though it were obvious.
But that was not the most common way to play.
Monopoly usually worked better with several people around the table, overlapping negotiations, and enough players for everyone to end up arguing over some property. With only two players, games could end too quickly or drag on for hours if neither gained a clear advantage.
Even so, Owen and Jenna did have fun playing by themselves.
And to make the games more interesting, they made small bets. Cooking the next dinner, choosing the movie for the night, or taking care of some household chore were common punishments for whoever lost.
"Look at you. Smiling while you talk about losing at Monopoly and cooking as punishment," Matt said with a smile.
"Shut up and go to work," Owen said, giving him a light shove as he left the office.
Matt laughed, waved a vague goodbye, and headed toward his own office.
He had arrived at the offices expecting nothing more than to waste time and drink a beer while talking to Owen. Now he was returning to his own office with two projects in his hands.
The break no longer mattered much to him.
He could finish the shooting script for the Instagram sketch that very day and then begin reading Chronicle at his own pace.
Just thinking about it had awakened once again that energy that seemed to disappear during his days off.
Owen returned home and honored his bet.
That was how the rest of the weekend passed.
On Monday morning, another piece of news arrived.
The weekend that had just ended had been Good Will Hunting's final one in theaters.
After more than twelve weeks, the film officially ended its theatrical run with a worldwide gross of 336.5 million dollars.
It had earned almost twenty-six times its 13-million-dollar budget.
A resounding success.
Far greater than anyone had imagined when its theatrical run began.
Good Will Hunting had not only recouped its investment many times over. It had become one of the most profitable and commercially successful modestly budgeted original dramas in film history.
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