By the time the sun set on the final day of the third week of its theatrical run, 12 Angry Men had transitioned from a "miracle" to a full-blown industrial phenomenon.
The box office numbers were, in a word, staggering. After an unprecedented opening weekend of $7.4 million, the film had done something almost never seen in modern cinema: it had grown in its second weekend. Driven by a tidal wave of word-of-mouth recommendations and the "Oliver Grant effect," the second weekend had grossed $9.5 million. By the time the third week concluded, the natural dip had finally begun, yet the film still pulled in a massive $6.9 million.
For a movie produced on a shoestring budget of $90,000, the ratio of investment to return was so astronomical that it broke every standard metric in Hollywood. Daniel Miller had achieved the highest ROI (Return on Investment) in the history of the medium.
Social media was a digital inferno. The hashtag #12AngryMen had trended for twenty-one consecutive days. The "Miller Muses" fan club had grown to more than a 100k members, with fans dissecting every frame of the movie while simultaneously thirsting over Daniel's red-carpet photos. But beneath the surface of the hype, the industry was watching the fallout of the UCLA scandal with bated breath.
Julian Vane had remained uncharacteristically silent. The man who was usually the first to post a sunset-filtered photo of his "creative process" had gone dark on Instagram and Twitter. The questions were becoming too loud to ignore: If Daniel Miller is this good, why would he ever need to steal from you? Vanguard Studios, sensing the shifting winds, finally released a statement. They didn't address the scandal directly; instead, they did what studios do best—they pivoted. They announced that Julian Vane's first feature-length project, an adult animated comedy/mystery titled Cheese Louise, was entering its final marketing phase. It was free real estate. They were banking on the controversy to keep Julian's name in the headlines, hoping that the "Golden Boy's" debut would overshadow Daniel's success.
But the public wasn't looking at Cheese Louise. They were looking at Daniel Miller, and they were guessing.
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> [Reddit] r/movies: What is Daniel Miller's Next Move?
> u/CinephileCat: "He's got at least $10M in his pocket now after the Horizon deal and backend points. I'm betting on a high-concept horror. Imagine what he could do with a haunted house if he made a courtroom feel that scary."
> u/DirectorDreams: "I think he sticks to Crime/Thriller. Maybe a gritty noir? Everyone is saying he'll have a $5M budget, but honestly, if he could do 12AM for $90k, he'll probably stick to under $10M to keep creative control."
> u/VanguardHater: "I just hope he stays away from the big studios for one more film. Build the Miller Studios brand first. If he can make a masterpiece for $90k, imagine him with $10M. He'd be a god."
---
Inside Daniel's new bungalow in Toluca Lake, the atmosphere was far removed from the digital noise. The house was finally starting to look like a home—minimalist, sharp, and quiet.
Tom was slumped over a mahogany dining table that was currently serving as a makeshift desk. He was staring at a monitor, his fingers flying across the keyboard as he did a final "pass" on a document they had been obsessing over for two weeks.
"I think... I think that's the one," Tom muttered, his voice raspy from too much coffee and too little sleep.
He reached over and hit the Print command.
The high-end laser printer Daniel had insisted on buying began to whir. It buzzed with a rhythmic, clinical precision, spitting out a crisp white page.
Daniel walked out from the balcony, tucking his phone into his pocket. He had just finished a call with Mark Solomon at Horizon, who was already begging for a sequel or a "spiritual successor." Daniel didn't look like a man who was thinking about sequels. He looked like a man about to launch a crusade.
He picked up the first page from the printer tray.
In bold, black letters, the title stared back at them:
STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE
On Earth-199, those four words represented the most significant cultural shift in the history of entertainment. It was the birth of the "Space Opera," a multi-billion-dollar empire that spanned movies, toys, books, and generations. It was a story of farm boys, princess-rebels, and dark lords—a mythic structure that had redefined the "Hero's Journey."
But in this world, those words were meaningless. To anyone else, it sounded like a weird science fiction title. To Daniel, it was a $150 million gamble.
Tom stood up, stretching his back until it popped. He looked at Daniel, who was holding the title page with a look of profound, quiet affection. It was a look Tom had seen before, but never this intense.
"I still can't get over it," Tom said, shaking his head and looking at the printer as it continued to spit out the script. "Star Wars. 'The Force.' Light-swords... sorry, 'Lightsabers.' Ships that jump into light-speed. Daniel, where did this come from? How did you build an entire galaxy, with its own physics and politics?"
Daniel didn't answer immediately. He couldn't tell Tom that he was essentially a translator for a god-tier library from another dimension. He just traced the letters of the title.
"It's a story about hope, Tom," Daniel said softly. "And it's a story about the scale of the human spirit."
Tom let out a dry laugh and sat back down, watching the pages pile up. Over the last two weeks, as Daniel had dictated the "lore" and the "world-building" to him, Tom had moved through phases of shock, skepticism, and finally, total awe.
He had stopped trying to read Daniel's expressions. He had simply accepted that his friend was a generational genius whose brain operated on a frequency the rest of the industry couldn't even hear.
"The scope is... it's terrifying, Dan," Tom said, his voice turning serious. "Twelve men in a room was a sprint. This? This is a marathon across a desert. We're talking about massive practical sets, pioneering special effects, a cast of hundreds, an orchestral score... You're not just jumping from a basement to a studio. You're jumping from a basement to the moon."
Daniel put the title page down and looked at Tom. "The earnings from 12 Angry Men are incredible, but they aren't enough. Not for this. Our profit share will be a few million. Star Wars needs a budget that makes 12 Angry Men look like a rounding error. I need a partner. A big one."
"Lionsgate, A24, and Legendary," Tom said, ticking them off on his fingers. "The 'Mini-Majors.' They all want the meeting. They've seen the numbers, they've seen the Oliver Grant video, and they want to be the ones who 'discovered' the next Hitchcock."
"A24 will want to keep it 'small' and 'arthouse,'" Daniel analyzed. "Lionsgate will want to turn it into a YA franchise with a love triangle. Legendary... Legendary might have the stomach for the spectacle."
"But the Big Five?" Tom asked. "Warner, Disney, Universal... they aren't calling?"
"They're calling," Daniel said, his eyes narrowing. "But they're calling to 'acquire' Miller Studios. They want to buy me out and put me in a luxurious coffin. They don't want to hear a pitch for an original Space Opera from a kid who just finished his first indie. They want to put me on a superhero sequel. I'm not doing that."
Tom stood up and walked to the window, looking out at the Toluca Lake neighborhood. "You're taking a massive risk, Dan. If you pitch Star Wars and it fails, or if it gets made and it doesn't hit, you're the guy who wasted $150 million of someone else's money. You could stay in the $10 million range for five years and be the King of Indie Cinema. Why do this now?"
"Because I don't have twenty films to wait for the industry to accept me," Daniel said, his voice gaining a hard, crystalline edge. "I want to solidify myself now. I want Miller Studios to be the name that every household in the world knows by next year. I want every project I touch to be an event."
Daniel walked over to a stack of folders on the counter. He had been preparing for these meetings with the same surgical precision he used in the edit room.
"I've prepared the estimated budget sheets," Daniel said, opening a folder. "The VFX requirements, the cast archetypes, the team size. It's going to be a crew of over five hundred. We're going to need to invent new ways to film space combat. We're going to need to scout locations in Tunisia and the UK."
Tom looked at the folders, then back at the script. "You're serious. You're actually going to try to sell a Space Opera to a mini-major."
"I'm not going to try, Tom," Daniel said, picking up the full script as the printer finally went silent. "I'm going to do it. We have the meetings starting next Monday. Lionsgate in the morning, A24 in the afternoon, Legendary on Tuesday."
Daniel felt the "System" pulse in his mind. The Reputation System was still sitting at zero, waiting for the theatrical run of 12 Angry Men to conclude, but he could feel the potential energy building.
He looked at the script in his hand—the story of Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Leia Organa. On Earth-199, this movie saved a studio. On this earth, it was going to destroy the status quo.
"Let's get the presentation materials ready," Daniel said, his eyes reflecting a light that Tom realized was ambition in its purest form. "It's time to show the Big Leagues what a real blockbuster looks like."
Tom sighed, but a reckless grin began to spread across his face. "Fine. Let's go build a galaxy. But if we end up back in that dance studio because we went bankrupt, I'm stealing your lemon tree."
Daniel smiled. "Deal."
As the two of them began to organize the mountain of paperwork, the sun set over Hollywood—a town that had no idea that a farm boy from a desert planet was about to change their world forever.
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A/N: @Creatur actually guessed the movie. For anyone worried this might be too big of a leap, don't. This movie won't release before a few others. Just trust in dear old me :D
On that note, keep throwing your Power Stones at me, I have developed a taste for them.
If you want to support me while getting a lot of extra chapters to read, consider visiting my Patreon: patreon.com/AmaanS