As the Q&A session wrapped up, Jihoon gave the audience a polite smile and thanked them for their questions.
He and the production crews then stepped down from the stage, slipping into the waiting area behind the curtains.
There, he planned to wait for his assistant, Mara, before heading out of the theater.
It didn't take long before Mara appeared, her usual brisk steps carrying her toward him.
But before Jihoon could greet her, he noticed another figure approaching.
Someone he hadn't expected—but someone he wasn't surprised to see either.
Stan Lee.
Jihoon's expression didn't change, but inside he was already bracing himself.
He wasn't about to greet the old man warmly.
Not after what had just happened.
Stan's shameless stunt—trying to hijack the Saw premiere to hint at Marvel's future—wasn't something Jihoon could easily overlook.
If this had been any other director or producer, they might have slapped him right there on stage.
Because gestures like that weren't just annoying; they carried weight.
They messed with marketing strategies, threw off distribution campaigns, and worst of all, risked stealing the spotlight from the film itself.
Everyone in the industry knew the game and rules.
Even competitors who had film going on at the point of time usually would launched smear campaigns after the movie was release a week time, so to derail its momentum.
That was when negative press or whispered scandals about the film's cast and crew started to surface, all designed to keep audiences from buying tickets. It was ruthless, but it was normal and agreeable at that point of time.
Timing was everything.
What Stan had done tonight was different.
He had no film of his own coming out soon, but he'd still dropped a bomb in the middle of someone else's premiere.
Normally, this would have been condemned as unprofessional.
But because it was Stan Lee—an industry legend, beloved for his age and reputation—no one dared to call him out.
Take Jim, the chairman of Fox, for example.
He had been sitting in the crowd earlier, and when Stan made his move, Jim hadn't so much as frowned.
No outrage, no frustration, just a polite smile and a shrug.
Everyone knew Fox had stakes in tonight's release, but the guest that attended today's premiere was in the film business too, so they also knew Stan's words weren't just idle chatter—Marvel was laying groundwork for its own cinematic universe, and Jim wasn't about to publicly clash with someone of Stan's stature.
So Jihoon expected Jim to remain composed, maybe even a little irritated, when Stan entered the waiting area alongside Mara and her mother.
But what Jihoon saw on Jim's face wasn't irritation at all.
It was shock.
Startled to be exact, such reaction make Jihoon curious so he followed the line of Jim's eyes.
And then it clicked. The surprise wasn't directed at Stan Lee—it was aimed squarely at Mara's mother.
Jihoon blinked. Now this was unexpected.
He had always known Mara came from a single-parent household. And that's according to the family detail on her resume when she was applying job at JH.
Jihoon knew that she had lived with her mom ever since her parents' divorce, and Jihoon had never thought twice about it.
But seeing Jim's face—wide-eyed, stunned, as though he'd seen a ghost—Jihoon's imagination immediately started spinning.
Deep down, he was already constructing a soap opera drama in his head.
Where Mara's mom and Jim might have shared a history, or maybe it was just the conventional Hollywood style of love at first sight.
Because the moment right now practically wrote itself: a soap-opera-style comedy where estranged lovers cross paths years later and their children unknowingly caught in the middle.
Jihoon had even come up with a title in his head—'How Jim Met Mara's Mother.'
And for a brief moment, Jihoon forgot all about the tension of the premiere. Cause he was too busy picturing the absurdity of the situation unfolding before his eyes.
He was already mentally writing the screenplay for the first season of this epic old-flame love story.
But then he realized Jim was already married and had a couple of children.
Now Jihoon looked at Jim with a face full of despise.
Deep down, he was already cursing the unfaithful man for having such ill intentions, even wondering whether his fifty-six-year-old peepee still carried the function of getting long—if you know what I mean.
If anyone around him could have seen the screenplay Jihoon was building in his head, they would've instantly understood why he had just won Best Screenwriter at the Oscars.
His imagination was too wild, too shameless, too hilariously indecent to belong to anyone with so-called "decent morals."
And just as Jihoon was about to upgrade 'How Jim Met Mara's Mother' into a full-blown 'Desperate Housewives'—though in Jim's case, Desperate Househusbands felt more accurate—he was abruptly jolted back to reality.
A hand landed on his shoulder.
"Hey, young man! What's wrong with your face?"
Jihoon blinked, snapped out of his daydream, only to find the culprit—Stan Lee.
The same old man who had just undermined him on stage, now leaning in like they were old drinking buddies.
Jihoon's expression cooled instantly.
"Sir," he said flatly, brushing the hand off his shoulder, "you're on the verge of harassment. Please keep your hands to yourself. I'm straight, and I have no interest in… expired meat."
Gasps and muffled chuckles rippled through the room.
Jihoon took a deliberate step back, widening the distance between them as if to underline the implication that Stan had just tried to make a move on his first base. Cause his hand was up and crossing his first base area.
Stan Lee, after hearing Jihoon's words, immediately felt a sting of shame.
The people around them were staring with strange, almost suspicious eyes, as if they had just discovered that Stan's preferences were far more unique than anyone had ever imagined.
He could endure the odd looks for a moment, but his pride wouldn't allow him to stay silent.
Quickly, he barked back,
"Hey! I'm just talking with you, man! Don't slam me down with your weird accusations!"
Jihoon, however, remained perfectly composed, still keeping what he called an appropriate distance.
In fact, he even took another step back, intentionally widening the misunderstanding.
That one step was no ordinary step.
It wasn't like Neil Armstrong's famous one step for mankind.
No—this was a steap to leap into disgrace for Stan Lee.
And disgrace was putting it mildly.
What Stan really felt now leaned far closer to insult—an insult aimed directly at his manhood and the legendary playboy persona he had carefully cultivated over the years since making his name in the industry.
Unable to let it slide, desperate to defend both his honor and his reputation as Hollywood's top-notch ladies' man, Stan Lee finally snapped.
For the first time in Stan Lee's long career—right here, in front of strangers, in public, in the middle of an open theater—he exploded like Jihoon had just unleashed the real Hulk inside him.
"MOTHERFUCKER!!!" he roared, his voice echoing through the room.
And followed by a string of California's finest profanity—a rich heritage of street cultural from the west coast "#$%!@$%$@#$#$#@."
That media like CCN or Fox could only be translated by the polite version of voice-over as: Beep. Beep. And Beep.
Meanwhile, cut off by the abrupt turn of events at that moment, Jim was yanked back into reality.
Truth be told, he was shocked to see Amanda here—because he knew exactly who she was, and which family she represented.
He glanced at Jihoon, who is still caught up in his childish back-and-forth with an equally childlike Stan Lee.
Jim wasn't sure whether this was good news for him or for Fox.
Because the power Amanda carried wasn't something they could counter.
In fact, even the influence and position Jim currently held had been granted to him by the very same power she represented.
The reason is Amanda's family owned Fox.
And that family was none other than the Murdoch family—the undisputed titans of global media.
An empire that didn't just dominate newspapers, television, and entertainment, but bent the very flow of information to its will.
Their networks shaped elections, toppled governments, and swayed public opinion across continents.
To cross them was to invite war with a family whose influence reached every living room, every screen, every headline in the world.
And looking at Jihoon's carefree face, Jim realized he didn't have the slightest clue about any of it.