An urgent call came not through the official channels of his office, but on the private line Duke had given only to a handful of his key operatives at 7 pm.
The voice on the other end was young, strained, and laced with a panic it was trying desperately to suppress.
"Duke. It's Spielberg." A pause, the sound of him swallowing hard. "Look we have a situation. A significant one."
Duke, who had been reviewing the latest box office tallies for Targets, set his papers down.
Spielberg's tone was not that of a producer reporting a problem; it was akin to that of an Intern who is trying to explain how he deleted a very important sotfware file.
"Explain the situation then," Duke said, his voice flat and calm, a deliberate counterpoint to the anxiety radiating through the phone line.
"It's Hopper," Spielberg said, the name a sigh of exhaustion. "He… he got into a physical altercation with Rip Torn. There was a knife involved"
Duke's eyebrows lifted a fraction of an inch. This was beyond creative differences; this was a breakdown of set discipline. "Cause?"
"Who knows? A disagreement over motivation? A look? It's impossible to tell out here. It's all… vibes and amphetamines."
"One minute they're talking while everyone ate dinner, the next minute Torn's got Hopper and is trying to wrestle him to the ground while Hopper's trying to bite his arm. Fonda had to pull them apart."
"Torn's packed his bags. He's gone. We've lost our primary supporting actor a week into the shoot."
Duke processed this. An actor leaving was a logistical and financial problem. A replacement would need to be found, locations rescheduled, costumes refitted. "Is that all of the problem, Steven? or is there more?"
There was a long silence on the other end of the line, and Duke could almost hear the young man gathering his courage, deciding how much to report to the office.
"There's more," Spielberg finally admitted, his voice dropping.
"The biggest problem is Hopper's… process. He's unstable. He's not directing. He rewrites scenes on the spot, then hands the pages to actors five minutes before we roll. He tells them to forget the lines and just 'feel it.'"
"He's shooting hundreds of thousands of feet of film with no clear narrative through-line."
Duke remained silent, forcing Spielberg to continue, to lay out the full, ugly truth of the situation.
"And that's not even the worst of it," Spielberg continued, his voice a conspiratorial whisper now.
"He's demanding the dailies, every day. He wants the raw footage delivered to his motel room."
This, Duke knew, was the true crisis.
Giving an unstable director with a known drug problem unsupervised access to the unedited, unprotected footage was a recipe for catastrophe.
He could destroy it in a paranoid frenzy, lose it, damage it, or worse, give it away to the press and create leaks that would sink the project before it was finished.
"Who has custody of the dailies?" Duke asked.
"The camera operator, Barry Feinstein. He's a really good man. He and I… we've formed a kind of… friendship. We've been refusing Hopper's demands. We tell him the film is being shipped directly to the lab in L.A., that there's no time."
"We tell him the projector is broken. We make up excuses. But he's getting more agitated, more paranoid."
"He's starting to accuse us of working for the studio, of sabotaging his vision. He says we don't 'get it.'"
"You and Feinstein are correct to call," Duke stated, his voice leaving no room for doubt. "The dailies do not leave the locked production truck., that is the main order. Your primary objective, above all else, is the preservation of the film asset. Do you understand?"
"Yes," Spielberg said, the affirmation sounding like a vow.
"The creative vision was the incentive we offered. The finished film is the product we require. Your job is to ensure we receive that product."
Duke paused, calculating his next move. Sending in a heavy-handed studio enforcer would only cause Hopper to rebel further, he also didnt want to intervene much on the project since he didnt want to damage the final cut of the film.
"I'm sending Jensen," Duke said. "He will arrive tomorrow. He will handle the logistics, to run interference with Torn's agent, and to find a replacement. You have to mention any further instability directly to him."
The relief on the other end of the line was palpable. "Yes. Thank you, Duke."
"See that you do." Duke hung up.
He sat for a moment in the profound silence of his office.
The Easy Rider investment was a high-risk, high-reward venture. He had known that.
But the report he was receiving from set indicated the risk was escalating toward a total loss of asset if Hopper couldnt be reign in.
He was basically dealing with a director who was both the project's engine and its most likely point of failure.
He picked up the phone again. "Jensen. Please go to the Easy Rider set tomorrow. Hopper is losing his mind. Spielberg and a camera operator, Feinstein, are boots on the ground. Also, remember under no circumstances, is Hopper allowed to get his hands on the dailies."
As he gave the directives, Duke felt a small certainty settle over him. This was the dirty, unglamorous underbelly of entertainment.
Right now, his biggest decision was about sending an executive producer into the desert to stop a talented madman from burning the entire project to the ground.
---
The late afternoon sun slanted across Duke's desk, illuminating the precise columns of numbers David Chen had just laid before him.
"The analysis is complete," Chen stated. "Based on their current sales, licensing revenue, and the significant liability of their distribution contract with DC, a fair valuation for Marvel Comics as a whole would be approximately seven million dollars."
Duke's eyes scanned the figures, his mind already dissecting the corporate anatomy of the struggling comic giant. "And our target?"
"A controlling interest," Chen replied without hesitation. "Fifty-one percent at least. It provides operational control without the complexity or immediate capital outlay of a full acquisition."
"We can make an initial offer of three point eight million. It will be rejected, but it will establish our position."
Duke leaned back, steepling his fingers. The logic was sound, but a new variable had entered his calculus. "Forget Charlton Comics," he said, his voice flat and final.
Chen blinked, the only sign of his surprise. "Duke? The distribution infrastructure is part of the core of our strategy. Owning the pipeline—"
"Yeah, Chen but we can't buy both," Duke interrupted. "We need to own the characters people line up to see. We buy Marvel for the IP. The stories. The icons... but the distribution will have to be solved by us."
He stood and walked to the window, looking out at the city. "Owning these IP's is valuable. They are recognized and we dont have to spend on brand awareness."
"The present is on comics, and yeah if we acquired it would help our distribution channels, but we don't have the money to acquire both Charlton and Marvel."
"In that case, the IP's whether it's in television animation, toys licensing, merchandise are more important. And maybe even one day," he said, his voice dropping as if stating a fundamental law, "Marvel IP's will be in films."
"Films that cost millions dollars to make."
He turned back to his operations manager, his gaze intense. "Revise the offer. We're not bidding for a piece."
"Even if we have to go on debt, I dont mind as long as we acquire Marvel as a whole. Structure it to get us what we need: the creative rights, the character library, the soul of the company."
---
Short chapter, i been all day trying to fix a bug in this website where it tells me that i have published a chapter and it doesn't appear on the client side.
But well, it's solved