<🎧 Song Recommendation: Not So Bad (Leans Gone Cold) by Rae Sremmurd>

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Leviathan crossed his arms and leaned against the doorframe. "Maybe he’s just tired. It happens."

The Canadian rapper’s statement made Marcus glare daggers at him.

"Tired?!" Marcus snapped, his voice echoing down the empty hotel hallway. "Are you mocking our work now? We didn’t exert anyone too much! He’s an actor, not a coal miner! He better wake up today or turn out sick, unless—"

Leviathan raised his hands defensively. "Chill, man. Everything will be fine. But why would you prefer him to be sick?" 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

"THE INSURANCE, LEVY!" Marcus lost his cool and snapped, making Leviathan realize that the director was being really serious.

Marcus ran a hand over his face, forcing himself to calm down a bit. He was going through a massive amount of pressure right now.

As a reputed director, he felt something brewing up in the industry, and he knew that filming during a global pandemic was a massive gamble.

That was exactly why he wanted them to be done with this movie as soon as possible.

So, his lead going cold on him was not something he expected or budgeted for.

Marcus looked Leviathan dead in the eyes. "We’re going to lose money if he doesn’t wake up. The insurance company won’t cover a nap. If he isn’t medically diagnosed with an illness, we pay for every single hour this set is delayed out of our own pockets. And that’s just among the many bad issues we might face."

Hearing Marcus break down the financial reality made Leviathan sigh in regret. For a brief second, he began to wonder if he made a mistake calling Von instead of going with Sammy.

"Why don’t you start filming all the scenes without him, then we’ll see when he wakes up?" Leviathan suggested, trying to be helpful.

Marcus rolled his eyes at the suggestion. Of course, that was what he had to do. He didn’t need to be told how to do his job.

***

Five days went by.

In that time, the hotel had turned into a tense, frustrating waiting game. Marcus had aggressively filmed all the B-roll footage, the exterior hotel shots, and every single scene that didn’t involve Aiden.

But unfortunately for all of them, Von still didn’t wake up.

He was hooked up to an IV drip to keep him hydrated, locked in a deep, unresponsive slumber. The medical team continued to say he was just resting, but the delay was bleeding the production dry.

Most of the indoor scenes involved Von, since Aiden wasn’t living on campus. The other half involved scenes where he was directly interacting with Camila, so that was exactly where the main issue laid.

Now, all that remained was to film those specific scenes and shoot the most important sequence of the movie: the romantic montage.

It encapsulated how Aiden and Camila fell deeply in love with each other. It involved them going out to the recreational center, splashing each other in swimming pools, buying ice cream, and genuinely breaking down their walls.

But now, Von was unavailable.

This led Marcus to worry a lot. The budget was shrinking by the hour. Left with no other choice, he picked up his phone and called Von’s manager, Emily, to deliver the harsh reality.

He didn’t sugarcoat it. He informed her that because Von’s unexplainable sleep wasn’t covered by the cast insurance, they would have to cover for every single delay in production directly from Von’s contract pay.

Knowing what had happened last time with Von’s controversies, the phone call had equally made Emily panic.

She did the math in her head and realized that with his delay, Von’s $250,000 base salary was already completely wiped out.

They might actually be losing money from this movie instead of earning something. Von was literally working for free now, and he didn’t even know it yet.

The atmosphere in the hotel bubble grew incredibly dark. The crew was angry, missing their families, and tired of waiting for a pop star to wake up.

And then, as if to add to Marcus’s mounting troubles, a massive leak occurred.

Someone inside the hotel bubble had sent a tip. A popular tabloid from a medium-sized entertainment newspaper dropped an article online, and that was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Given that Marcus was a reputed, award-winning director and Leviathan was a music mogul, the headline was designed to cause maximum damage.

[A PERFECT DISASTER? Production Stalls on Marcus Burglewater & Leviathan’s Debut Indie Film]

[Hollywood is no stranger to ambitious failures, but what happens when an acclaimed indie director and a global rap superstar try to make a multi-million-dollar movie inside a pandemic lockdown? Apparently, a massive disaster.

Sources at the Grand Beverly Hotel have exclusively revealed to us that production for Marcus Burglewater’s highly anticipated adaptation, ’Perfect Ruins,’ has completely ground to a halt.

The reason? The unnamed, inexperienced lead actor has mysteriously collapsed on set.

Insiders report that the set has devolved into a toxic, poorly managed nightmare.

The lead actor, who has zero major acting credits to his name, reportedly buckled under the pressure of Marcus’ demanding schedule, suffering from exhaustion.

The production has been stalled for nearly a week, bleeding hundreds of thousands of dollars a day.

But perhaps the most shocking revelation is the bullet that was dodged by Hollywood golden boy, Sammy Howkins.

While early rumors suggested Howkins was the top choice for the lead role, sources close to the A-list actor confirmed he actually abandoned the project weeks ago.

"Sammy saw the sinking ship coming from a mile away," our insider stated. "He realized he was dealing with two green producers playing with millions of dollars and smartly walked away before the cameras even started rolling."

With no lead actor, a bleeding budget, and a crew held hostage in a hotel bubble, one has to ask: Will Perfect Ruins ever see the light of day, or is it already dead in the water?]