“So… I heard you have a… you know… script for me?” George said, slightly out of words in the middle of his sentence, but still bringing it back to normal by the end. Mark was used to this style of speaking. Everyone at LucasFilms knew Mr. Lucas was not really good at speaking. That was one of the main reasons why he had brought Mr. Cowl as a partner, to handle all the speaking and everything of the business other than making the movies themselves.

“Yes. I have it here with me, and I was hoping you could just give it a read in your time. It’s something I have been working on for the past 3 years in my free time.”

“What’s it… uh bout?”

“It’s a fantasy crime drama with elements of psychology in it. The overarching themes are death and how we react to it, the capital punishment, morality and justice, love, compassion and trust, racism and finally embracing differences.”

“So it’s grounded… in reality?”

“Yes. You see, writing Star Wars with everyone else made it a little saturated, and I did not want to confuse some of my ‘passion project’s’ ideas into Star Wars, or visa versa, as both would be bad. So I decided to go with a completely different aspect, to be able to separate the two things in my mind.”

“Hmm, acceptable. But you should know, as I will be informing the rest of the team in the afternoon… you know preparations for the second instalment of Star Wars will begin soon. I have the… uh basic idea, and all of you will have to sit down and make it into a workable plot line and proper dialogue.”

“Of course.”

“Good. I will read through this and inform you if it has potential.”

“Thank you, Mr. Lucas.”

Mark left the room after shaking the man’s hand in agreement, and returned to work. However, Lucas did not appear for the rest of the day, and Mark went home without receiving instructions for beginning work on the next movie.

Instead, Lucas left work on time with the rest of the people. Since it was a Saturday night, he went straight to the bus and went over to Los Angeles to Elis’s place to go and watch the movie with her. Due to her busy schedule for the first time in 3 years, he had to wait almost an entire week before he had been able to make a Sunday night movie plan. As for what he would do tonight and the next morning, it was rather simple actually, the two lovebirds would spend the time together… really close together.

…

It had only been a month since Ed Mintz created his company called CinemaScore, which had people stationed outside movie theatres, and ask movie goers about their ratings for the movie, and why they decided to watch the movie in the first place.

Still, the novelty of the concept, of giving viewers exactly what they wanted; the views of the common movie-goers and not critics, was enough for Entertainment Weekly to give him the opportunity and publish his reviews for the movies. And surprisingly, this had greatly boosted their sales, which had made CinemaScore a permanent addition to the magazine in just over 2 weeks since the establishment of the company, even receiving a considerable amount of money to expand his operations outside Los Vegas.

This resulted in a company who had people all over the United States of America randomly selecting theatres to interview people, and its organisation structure and process for each movie had considerably improved over the month since its conception.

“Hello, I am John Smith from CinemaScore. Would you mind filling out this survey for the movie… Star Wars IV: A New Hope?”

“Oh, sure,” Elise muttered before picking up two of the card, handing one to Mark while reading her own.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

Mark saw the paper and felt nostalgic for a while. He recalled the first movie the Mark from the original timeline had seen. It was the first Micheal Bay Transformers, and it was the reason he had become interested in movie scripts.

‘It was an opening weekend, just like tonight, and I gave the maximum I could give, but Mom did not like the movie at all, and was even mad at dad for a really long time… Now that I think about it… it was perhaps not the best movie to take a 5-year-old to… but still, many people thought like me, and despite bad reviews from critics, it had a good score with Cinemascore, and also earned a lot of money.’

Mark looked at the tabs, and since it was his own movie, gave it an A, and yes for all the questions, before handing it back to the employee from Cinemascore who appeared to be bored out of his very mind, perhaps from having done this same task too many Tims to even count.

‘Strange. Wasn’t it supposed to be that they would interview people only during the opening weekend to get the raw reactions of people unswayed by word of mouth and a lot of critics? Why are they here doing collecting information for the movie almost a week later?’

“So, what did you give it?” Elise stretched her arms into the air after having sat in the seat without a break for so long.

“An A of course. What about you?” Mark questioned back with a light chuckle.

“A, after all, you were part of the writers of the movie!” Elise giggled as she sped up and turned around in front of of Mark while walking backwards, he hands behind her and a beautiful smile on her face.

“Come here you~” Mark reached out and grabbed her waist, pulling her into an embrace even before they left the theatre.

Thankfully, the two could hold onto their urges till they reached Elise’ home. After all, neither of the two owned cars, and Mark did not even live here. Unfortunately, another set of sheets needed to be thoroughly cleaned before being usable again.

…

While Mark was… getting jiggy with Elise, George Lucas had finished reading the script he had received from one of his junior scriptwriters. In fact, he had already read it twice, and had cried both times, causing him to read it a third time.

Now, he finally finished reading it, and had successfully stopped himself from crying.

‘Damn… this is amazing. No! Lucas, focus. You have to complete the trilogy for Star Wars before you can focus on making another movie. Yes, Star Wars is what you have spent almost half your life thinking about and finally you have been able to make it work. Do not get distracted,’ George Lucas shook his head as he let go of the script and legit clatter onto his plastic table.

Being a brand new company, Lucas did not spend much money on furnishing his office space, or any of the office space in the office he had rented. Everyone had foldable chairs and plastic table-tops with metal legs, including his own office.

“Sigh… This is the first time I have felt like making a movie so strongly, and it just so happened to come when I was in the middle of the most important project possible. Damnit!”

After a while of thinking, George Lucas finally picked up his the phone to the side and rang a number.

“Hey Cowl. It’s me, George. I have something I want to show you… Yes, it a movie script… No I will not be making it, you already know I want to make a trilogy, and I will not stop until I do… Yes, its really good, in fact, it is not just a script, but even has illustrations for important scenes and character designs for the characters as well!… Oh? I thought you were in New York?… Ah, Fox wanted to to talk… I see. Yes… I’ll fax it to Los Angeles. Aright, but make sure it gets made. I really like the script, and I don’t want it to just collect dust in some forgotten corner of the Big 6’s script storage. Yes… bye.”

Putting the phone down, George reached over to the other side and pressed a button, causing a ringing sound outside his office. Moments later, his assistant walked in after knocking and asked, “Anything I can help with Mr Lucas?”

“Fax this over to Cowl’s residency in Los Angeles. Hmm, also make two copied of it to keep here. Understood?”

“Of course,” she nodded softly and took Mark’s script with her.

“This is the best I can do for you, Mr. Whitehall. Do not disappoint my trust and leave the company too early,” Lucas muttered to himself. He knew someone who could make a script like this was someone who would naturally wish to make more scripts of his own, and would likely not stay as a junior scriptwriter in his company for too long.

However, he did not intend on promoting him to senior scriptwriter since he knew this very fact. Being a senior scriptwriter would likely not change munch, so it was better to just keep his cost low and prevent himself from loosing reputation of going against the norm and having two senior scriptwriters for one script, and then having the one he just promoted leave not too long later.