MHS – Chapter 152

“It’ll be called Netflix.”

Will said as if it was something obvious, forgetting for a moment that on this earth, there was no such thing as Netflix.

Ignoring the latter part, Amanda mused.

“Netflix…hmm. That does sound quite appealing. But anyway, what is with you suddenly wanting to get an OTT?”

Amanda asked as everyone focused their eyes on Will, having the same question.

“It’s not sudden. I always wanted to get an OTT later on. But since Dream Vision is expanding so fast and continuously keeps getting good movies, I thought it was about time I pre-pon the idea. Otherwise, we would be missing out on a potentially big market.”

Will said as he strolled around the meeting room’s podium. After taking a glance at the faces of people sitting in the meeting room, he continued.

“Most of you should already know, but for those who don’t, let me tell you something. I’ve already promised an OTT series to OP pictures, but I don’t want to continue this trend in future and let them reap all the benefits. That’s why I have decided to get my own OTT platform for any of the possible series’ in future.”

Will finished his monologue and Amanda, who had been waiting for him to finish immediately pointed out one of the major worries of the plan.

“Getting an OTT platform is all good and well but you should realise that we will have to invest billions of dollars to get it done. We would need blockbuster movies on the platform. Not to mention that getting the rights for those movies would take a big chunk of money.”

Amanda finished mentioning her worries and everyone couldn’t help but nod. After all, what she mentioned were legit worries that the movie will face.

It takes billions to get streaming rights for blockbuster movies and many other OTT sites already have it.

Including the Fame Point that he had converted into money, and the box office of [Sherlock Holmes] Will had gotten a lot of money. He spent almost $10 million dollars on the office rent, which he would have to renew in August again.

Not only that, but he also had spent time on many movies. He had spent around $7 million on [500 days of Summer] and around $90 million on [1917]. Apart from that, he had spent 51% of the total budget of [Liberty City]. The other 49% was paid by mega works.

[500 days of Summer] was distributed by OP Pictures and grossed $157 million at the box office, earning many times more than its initial budget. Will had earned around $38 million from the movie, recovering the budget as well as making many times the profit.

As for [1917], it was distributed by Foxstar and the movie grossed 370 million dollars and became the first movie to break the $300 million mark at the box office this year. Will had earned 155 million dollars from the movie.

[Liberty City] was distributed by Mega Works and had just been released 2 weeks ago, already crossed the $100 million mark, currently grossing at $135 million and still counting. The first month's profit from this movie won’t come for at least two more weeks.

Will had earned more than $10 million just from [Harry Potter: The Philosopher’s Stone]. Bringing his current bank balance to a whopping $470.8 million.

That much money was enough to buy 470 small islands and Will could peacefully live without working his whole life, having anything a man can desire.

(A/N - Never buy an island. The taxes would be enough to make you island-less in 10 years. Speaking from experience.)

But opening an OTT and making it go big scale was still a far stretch in that amount.

“My plan is to get 3-4 series in pre-production in the upcoming 2 years as a Netflix exclusive series. Apart from that, all the Dream Vision movies would only be available at Netflix some months after their launch. We’ll also make deals with other studios to get their movies and series on Netflix for a year.

They can take their movie’s out after a year. This way, we’ll have to pay a lot less than the estimate. It’s better to contract other studios for a year than to buy every movie’s streaming rights for a lifetime one by one. Secondly, we’ll try to get series and movies from other industries too.”

In this world, OTT’s only had Hollywood movies and series and people still hadn’t thought of the idea to sub from other countries' movies and series. There were many famous subbed and dubbed movies and series in Will’s world where the dub version had earned more than the original.

One of the biggest examples were series like Money Heist, Squid Game, etc. Anime also covered a big part of the dubbing and subbing market.

Just thinking about how popular anime could be and how big the market was enough to make Will anticipate the future.

Since no OTT had this feature yet, Will wanted to use this as his edge, something to make Netflix stand out from other OTT platforms.

As everyone listened to Will’s thorough plan, they couldn’t help but be shocked inwardly as Will kept on explaining about how they would make the app, how much should it cost, why should people use it and why is it worth it. Amanda, Jeffrey and Alexia were shocked to their cores, what Will was talking about can very well end up becoming the world’s number one OTT platform if executed well, and the thought alone was scary.

‘What a monster in sheep’s clothing.’

Alexia thought as she finally realised that there was no end to the depth of a monster like Will Evans. On the outside, he looked every bit like a charming young man, who wouldn’t be the smartest, but would be well accepted in the society. But what lies inside him was what had made him come so far, and everyone realised for the first time.

‘This man’s goal isn’t just to earn big. It’s to become the best in the world.’

It was a crazy thought which was unbelievable as no one in the world would think that ‘I want to be the best man in the world’. But Will Evans’ actions spoke more than his tongue. He had proven time and time again that he wasn’t just a random wonder of Hollywood, but a carefully and well planned Miracle.

“When exactly do you want to start working on the platform?”

Emily Featherton, the head of the technical department, was a woman in her thirties. She stood up and asked this question. For her, this sounded like a world changing project, and being a tech geek, she couldn’t want anything more than to be a part of it.

“I want to start working on it as early as possible, so that we can release it by the start of next year. It’s been 7 month of time. I would hire more professionals and software engineers to join the technical team, but I want the app ready before the next year, with no bugs and all testing done.”

Will replied as he suddenly started drawing something on the white board that was on the wall adjacent to the podium.

Will’s drawing was always good, and even his random scribbles didn’t feel like they'd been put out randomly. He drew an ‘N’ that had folded in its corner and wrote the word Netflix that was in a small crescent arching shape.

He finally put down the marker and pointed towards the logo.

“This logo. In the upcoming 10 years, I want to make it so that any random person you stop and ask ‘which logo is this’, should be able to answer without hesitation that it’s Netflix’s logo.”

Will finally finished his speech as he waited for everyone to take in his words.

In his mind, he was also thinking of Netflix's iconic tune of Tadump!

Pin drop silence.

This sentence could easily sum up the atmosphere of the meeting room. Emily was the first one to regain her consciousness as she started clapping her hands. Everyone slowly regained their composers and started following after Emily.

Clap Clap Clap

Rounds of applause filled the meeting room as Will’s respect in the eyes of every employee present increased ten folds, or even more.

“Brilliant boss!”

“Just wow!”

Such comments filled the room as clapping slowly subsided.

Amanda and Jeffrey went near him as the former smiled and said.

“What’s with your ambitions? That was so childishly cool.”

She chuckled after saying that.

Will just rustled his hands through his hair, as if embarrassed.

“So, what are your next goals? I am talking about your current to-do list instead of the world domination plan.”

Jeffrey asked jokingly and Will and Amanda laughed at that.

“Well, first of all. It’s going to be the series for RBO as well as [The Terminator]. Other than that, there is [Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows] and some other movies. We would also be expanding on DTA and start headquarters in different countries next year. On that note, those other movies are also going to start my dream of creating the world’s most successful franchise.”

Will said and both Amanda and Jeffrey got curious.

“What are you talking about exactly?”

Jeffrey asked, unable to contain his curiousness.

Will looked at him and then smiled mischievously as he said.

“Superheroes.”