บท 49: Smart Enough II

"What did you say?!" Ovitz, who was confident in his scheme, couldn't help but ask out at the old man's degrading question.

"I said: Are you people sure you are smart enough to lead your companies?" Sullivan obliged Ovitz's question and made the CAA master feel even more foolish.

"We are smart enough to rise to our positions, so insinuating that we are dumb seems unnecessary." Eisner scoffed at the old man's childishness and turned aggressive. "Are you going to accept co-production or not?"

"If you aren't going to, then the Home Alone series is done for. If you agree, then just choose amongst the companies that gave favorable conditions for co-production." Old Diller was also done with the nice guy act.

Sullivan reeled in his reveal and still said. "How can you guarantee that co-producing with you thugs won't destroy the Home Alone series? It seems that you are too fixated on it that you might have set some traps beforehand."

"You have no choice either way. For CAA, a good movie is already okay enough." Ovitz sneered at the old man's pointless guardedness. "But for these guys, taking over your company is the true goal."

"Don't scare off the elderly, Ovitz. You are also exposing our secret. You never know how Mr. Creed would adapt countermeasures." Eisner reprimanded his friend but the lackadaisical tone in doing it meant that exposing the secret won't have any effect on their plan.

Sullivan and Alexander had already put some pieces together.

With Home Alone as their starting point, the hostile takeover of the chosen co-producer is in place.

The Home Alone sequel would be fully controlled by them and bloated and overfunded. When it would come out, its destroyed reputation along with the serious losses would severely damage the Creed companies.

The co-producer would constantly offer poisonous potatoes as their help. The lack of funds would leave the Creeds no choice but to ask for a co-production model.

Bloating, overfunding, and destroying would become a cycle until the complete Creed companies would be destroyed.

A simple and cruel plan that has a lot of contingencies to remedy the situation but the overbearing majors would probably cut those options off.

Asking for other investors, the majors would just offer greater incentives to those who would think of going for Creed Films.

Choosing to cut off Home Alone's prospects to prevent all of it from happening is the best and also the worst option.

Having no Home Alone sequel would mean that the threat of co-production and hostile takeover was stopped in place.

However, the major studios' goal would still be achieved. A profitable series is the lifeblood of a production company.

Having none meant that the production company would always have to gamble on new films and be whittled away by the misses.

If a potentially profitable series is found, the Home Alone sequel threat would reappear again and everything would start over.

Alexander can't help but applaud how far these people would go to keep their monopoly.

Any other company would probably be kneeling in defeat at the moment but the Creeds weren't following the script.

The existence of Alexander himself was the best guarantee of having no losing movie production. Even Sullivan, who did not know about his grandson's foresight, was too praising of the boy to think that he would fail.

Sullivan himself was also a guarantee with his unleashed skills. There was no way that an old man who experienced the worst odds would back down.

Even if they were slowly taken over, there was no way he was going down without a fight.

--------

"What do you choose, Mr. Creed? Either way, you are still bound to lose." Eisner still wasn't the Disney tyrant of the late 90s but his demeanor today was the growing portion of it.

"A perfect plan indeed to solve your troubles which is us. However... my choice is my previous question." Sullivan grinned at them and treated them as fools.

"I'll repeat it for you. Are you people sure you are smart enough to lead your companies?"

These smart people were ticked off and were ready to pounce but Diller stopped them with his inquiry. "Mr. Creed, can you tell us what we've done to make you think that we are stupid? Since you are the smart one, then you must also have the solution to our perfect trouble-ending plan. Do enlighten us?"

"Mr. Diller, you are only proving that you are stupid by asking that question. As for that perfect plan, Mr. Ovitz and Mr. Eisner's stupid overconfidence with their 'reluctant reveal' had already destroyed it." Sullivan had truly overestimated these competitors of his.

"You haven't explained clearly." Even Diller was ticked at this point. "Do enlighten us as I asked you to!"

Without further delay, Sullivan just went with the timely reveal he always delayed. "You people are stupid because you don't seem to understand basic vocabulary. To enlighten you, I'll point out some key tenses in my previous sentences."

The executives and representatives were fuming but old Creed didn't care for it. He just did what he said he would do.

"Why should I produce the sequel this year?"

"I also repeated it to Ovitz: Why should I produce the sequel this year?"

"The key words from those are: 'this year'."

"From my long words, I said that the Home Alone series was quite simple. The key word from that is 'was'."

Sullivan had to imitate an irritated teacher that has no choice but to retell his lessons just because his idiot students just don't comprehend them.

The stupidness was slapped towards these smart people and it made them stupidly dumbfounded.

"What do those things mean?" Ovitz failed to catch on but that didn't mean that the others were the same as him.

The arrogance and smugness from Eisner were extinguished. The Disney tyrant, who lead an animation studio into a major, felt too much humiliation that he wanted to hide.

"It was stupid to ask that question, indeed." Diller grimaced with his face turning incredibly ugly.

The rest of the group had a rare moment of synchronization as their divergent and individual thoughts joined together to feel collective shame.

"We've already produced 5 Home Alone movies, so your perfect plan is pointless. Like you've said Mr. Eisner, I have already adapted countermeasures because of Mr. Ovitz's stupid divulgence of your 'secret'." Sullivan grinningly concluded his lesson and walked away with his grandson.