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Chapter 75: Simultaneous Launch
🕑 Added 2025-10-20 11:39:11 +0000 UTCBeyond the immediate money-printing potential, Alex had another reason for choosing the Avengers as his next project: timing.
Infinite Realms had just dropped its fifth major expansion—"Interstellar Expedition.
The expansion's foundation came from content created three years ago by Storm Entertainment , a major American studio. Their "Starbound" and "Cosmic Frontier" dungeons had built the narrative framework that Infinite Realms corporate adapted into the main storyline.
The new expansion introduced multiple alien civilizations, dozens of planets, fully realized extraterrestrial cultures, and an entire playable Zerg homeworld. Humanity had formed an Interstellar Alliance and was now fighting back against the galaxy's greatest threat.
Translation? Space content was about to be huge.
The current top-tier dungeons in Infinite Realms were already pivoting hard toward sci-fi and cosmic themes. Every major studio was developing space-based content. The writing was on the wall.
And stories like Guardians of the Galaxy, Thor: Ragnarok, and Infinity War? They fit perfectly into that space-faring narrative framework.
Alex was playing the long game. By the time Stormwind reached advanced-tier status and could contribute to main storylines, they'd have an entire cosmic superhero universe ready to integrate seamlessly.
"According to the development timeline," Alex continued, pulling up a detailed Gantt chart, "the new IP officially launches December 12th at the latest. Both film and game content will release simultaneously—a coordinated transmedia launch."
He clicked through to the next slide showing three movie posters.
"On the film side, we're producing three major releases: Iron Man, Captain America, and The Avengers. All releasing within a six-month window of each other."
"The Avengers game content will use Iron Man as the entry point, gradually introducing other heroes—Bruce Banner as Hulk, Thor, Steve Rogers as Captain America. Each gets their own spotlight, their own character arc. Then we bring them together to face an extraterrestrial threat as a unified team."
Alex spent the next twenty minutes walking through character relationships, story arcs, power sets, and how everything interconnected. The room was dead silent except for his voice. People were literally leaning forward in their seats.
The ambition was staggering. Alex had just created Avatar, then turned Fast & Furious into a cultural phenomenon. Now, with F&F still printing money, he was already launching an entirely new IP.
That just didn't happen.
The standard industry playbook was simple: create one hit IP, then milk it dry. Squeeze every dollar from that property before even thinking about starting fresh. It made perfect business sense—why risk failure when you had a proven money-maker?
Developing a brand new IP required enormous creative energy, massive financial investment, and carried huge risk. Even legendary studios with decades of hits under their belts released flops. Nobody batted a thousand.
From a pure business perspective, Alex should be doubling down on Fast & Furious right now. Create a sequel, expand the racing mechanics, design new vehicles, maybe add motorcycle content or off-road racing. The genre was hot, the audience was there, the framework was proven.
It would be easy money. Safe money.
But Alex Morrison clearly wasn't optimizing purely for safe returns. He wasn't the type of entrepreneur who found one successful formula and repeated it until audiences got bored.
He wanted to create. To experiment. To push boundaries.
Maybe that's exactly why he'd already delivered two masterpieces. That hunger for something new, that willingness to walk away from guaranteed money to chase a bigger vision—you couldn't teach that.
And based on what he'd revealed so far, the Avengers concept was genuinely innovative. A completely fresh IP with nothing in common with his previous work. Massive worldbuilding, interconnected characters, novel superhero concepts, a cosmic scope that could span multiple storylines.
The creativity on display was legitimately impressive.
While Fast & Furious sales continued their stratospheric climb and racing content flooded the market, Stormwind Entertainment quietly began ramping up Avengers development.
The project team was massive—the largest Stormwind had ever assembled. They'd even subdivided it into specialized strike teams, each responsible for different characters and storylines.
Made sense. The Avengers universe was exponentially more complex than anything they'd tackled before.
The core team consisted primarily of Fast & Furious veterans who'd proven they could execute at the highest level. They'd been supplemented by a wave of new hires—top talent poached from rival studios who wanted to be part of whatever magic Stormwind was cooking up.
Meanwhile, Fast & Furious development hadn't stopped. A new chapter based on the sixth and seventh films was already more than halfway done, scheduled for early next year.
Alex was running multiple massive projects simultaneously. Most CEOs would collapse under that pressure. He seemed to thrive on it.
Stormwind also finalized another major partnership with Morrison Entertainment—a three-picture deal for Iron Man, Captain America, and The Avengers.
Alex's requirements were specific and challenging: the movie actors needed to look as close as possible to their game character models. Visual consistency across media was critical for the transmedia strategy to work.
The production team initially proposed going full CGI for all main characters. Technically feasible, especially with motion capture technology advancing rapidly.
Alex shut that down immediately.
"We'd lose the soul," he'd argued in the production meeting. "CGI characters can look incredible, but they lack that human element. The subtle expressions, the charisma, the screen presence that makes audiences connect emotionally. We'd be turning what could be a global blockbuster into a niche animated film. That's not what we're building."
So Morrison Entertainment launched a global casting call, searching for actors whose natural appearance matched the game character designs.
Finding those matches? Incredibly difficult.
This world's entertainment industry had diverged significantly from Alex's previous life. Many Hollywood A-listers he remembered didn't exist here—or had pursued completely different careers. Hell, Hollywood itself wasn't even called Hollywood in this timeline. The American film industry hub was centered in Los Angeles, but locals called it "Cinema City" rather than Hollywood.
Cinema City was still the global entertainment capital—fashion, music, film, luxury brands, cultural trendsetting. The American film industry's dominance was unquestioned, producing award-winning content that dominated box offices worldwide for decades.
But the major studios were different. No Disney, no DreamWorks, no 20th Century Fox, Columbia Pictures, Universal, or Warner Bros. At least, not with those names or those specific histories. The studios that existed here had produced entirely different films with different stars.
Which meant the actors who'd become famous were also completely different.
Finding someone who naturally looked like Tony Stark? Finding the perfect Steve Rogers? That was going to be a hunt.
Los Angeles, Cinema City District – Late Evening
Robert Downey Jr.'s car died on Sunset Boulevard at 11:47 PM.
He'd just wrapped another grueling fourteen-hour day playing "Concerned Bystander #3" in some forgettable cop drama, earning scale rates that barely covered rent. Now his piece-of-shit Honda had decided tonight was the perfect time to give up entirely.
Robert tried the ignition again. And again. The engine turned over weakly, coughed, and died.
"Come on," he muttered, slamming his palm against the steering wheel. "Come ON."
Nothing. Just the clicking sound of a dead battery and the ambient noise of Los Angeles nightlife continuing around him, utterly indifferent to his problems.
Robert leaned back in the driver's seat, closing his eyes. He was forty-two years old, completely washed up, and going nowhere fast—which was fitting, since his car wasn't going anywhere either.
He'd started acting young. Really young. Had shown genuine talent, gotten some decent roles in his twenties. Then the drugs happened. Arrests, rehab stints, relapses, jail time. He'd burned every bridge, destroyed every opportunity, pissed away the best years of his career.
Now he was just another aging character actor grinding out anonymous supporting roles, hoping for that one lucky break that probably wasn't coming.
Some nights the weight of it all felt crushing. The disappointment, the wasted potential, the knowledge that he'd sabotaged his own life. Those nights, the old cravings came back hard—that seductive whisper promising escape, numbness, a way to stop feeling the failure.
He'd been clean for six years now. Six years of white-knuckling it, of going to meetings, of choosing the hard path every single day.
Tonight felt like one of those dangerous nights.
His phone rang, cutting through the spiral of dark thoughts.
Robert stared at it for a long moment before answering. "Susan."
"Honey," his wife's voice came through, warm and concerned. "You sound terrible. What's wrong?"
Susan was his second wife, his anchor, the reason he'd gotten clean and stayed clean. Without her, he'd probably be dead or in prison. Definitely not sober.
"Car died," Robert said flatly. "I'm stuck on Sunset. It's just... one of those nights, you know?"
"I know," Susan said quietly. Then her tone shifted, becoming more animated. "But actually, I called for a reason. I just saw something interesting—a film company doing a global casting call. They're looking for a lead actor with a very specific look for some superhero movie."
Robert almost laughed. "Susan, I'm forty-three and barely employable. I'm not getting cast as a superhero lead. Those roles go to Chris Hemsworth types—"
"Robert, stop." Susan's voice was firm. "I looked at their reference images. The character description. It's you. I mean it's literally you—the goatee, the face shape, the eyes, everything. It's like they designed the character with you in mind."
Robert opened his eyes, staring at the Los Angeles skyline through his windshield. "What's the character?"
"Some genius billionaire inventor who builds a high-tech suit of armor. 'Tony Stark.' Apparently it's part of some big superhero team thing."
A genius billionaire. Robert couldn't help the bitter laugh. "Yeah, I'm real qualified to play a successful person."
"You're qualified to play someone brilliant who's made terrible choices and has to rebuild their life," Susan shot back. "Someone who's been to rock bottom and clawed their way back. Someone who has demons but fights them every day. You think they want some pretty boy with no depth? They want someone who can bring weight to the role."
Robert was quiet for a long moment.
"Just submit for it," Susan pressed. "What do you have to lose? At worst, nothing changes. At best... maybe this is the break you've been waiting for."
Through the phone, Robert could hear the hope in her voice. The belief that he still had something to offer, that his story wasn't over.
"Okay," he said finally. "Okay. Send me the casting information."
"Already emailed it to you," Susan said, and he could hear her smile. "Now call a tow truck and come home. We'll put together your audition materials tomorrow."
After hanging up, Robert sat in his dead car for another minute, watching Los Angeles go about its business around him.
A genius billionaire inventor who builds a suit of armor.
Against all logic, against all his learned pessimism and beaten-down expectations, Robert felt the smallest spark of something he hadn't felt in years.
Hope.
Maybe Susan was right. Maybe this was it.
He pulled out his phone to call for a tow, but first opened his email to look at the casting notice.
The character image stared back at him from the screen.
It looked exactly like him.
Comments
Cajun sS
tyfc
Cajun sS
Damn I need more chapters
