Adam and Angelina watched the scenery shift as the car climbed, taking in a quiet, unhurried view that felt completely disconnected from the frantic pace they had been living over the last few months.
After a guard post checked Litt’s credentials and waved them through, the car wound along a long, hedge-lined drive—the shrubs grown over two meters high for absolute privacy—before finally stopping in front of the property.
Inside the gate, a perfectly kept outdoor pool came into view first, and Angelina let out an actual cheer at the sight of it.
Litt unlocked the front door and led them through.
The main exterior walls were a clean off-white, and the back of the house featured massive, transparent glass walls that opened the living room straight out toward the hills beyond.
It boasted seven bedrooms and seven bathrooms.
Some of the furniture left behind by the previous owner sat under dust covers, but even half-dressed like that, the place had an unmistakable, imposing scale.
Adam walked through slowly, doing the math in his head.
A house this size would need dedicated staff just to keep it from gathering dust.
He would need a car.
He would probably need someone to drive it, given how spread out this part of the city was, and likely someone to double as a bodyguard, given how much more visible he was about to become.
All of that could wait.
The house came first.
“I’ll take it,” he told Litt, cutting off the agent’s practiced sales pitch.
“Reach out to the owner directly.
I’d like to move in as soon as it’s finalized.”
Litt’s composure cracked into a wide, unguarded smile before he caught himself and immediately got on his phone.
Two days later, the paperwork was done.
At nearly seven million dollars, the villa was officially his.
With enough capital behind it, the whole process moved frictionlessly; the agent handled every logistical detail, leaving Adam to simply show up with his bags.
After a quick trip to pick up the basics—sheets, towels, the kind of essential toiletries nobody thinks about until they’re standing in an empty house—Adam and Angelina moved in properly.
A few quiet, unhurried days followed before Adam finally sat down and got back to work, starting in earnest on the proposal and script for Get Out.
By mid-November, Saw had run its course in theaters.
Its final North American total landed at a staggering $86.52 million.
By most industry estimates, it secured the eleventh spot for the year, falling just short of the top ten behind The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear, which had cleared the $100 million mark.
Nobody in the business treated that as anything close to a disappointment.
The Naked Gun 2 1/2 had a built-in audience and a production budget of $23 million; once marketing was factored in, it would need years of home video and television licensing just to turn a real profit.
Saw, by comparison, was a $1.3 million production.
It was already projected to bring in another $80 million overseas, putting its worldwide total somewhere near $160 million.
After costs, New Line stood to clear $60 to $70 million from theatrical revenue alone, with nearly as much waiting in licensing, video, and the newly established franchise IP.
It was, by any reasonable measure, a gold mine.
New Line’s stock climbed noticeably in the weeks that followed, and Shay’s own assets and position within the company strengthened right along with it.
Every major studio in town sent executives to discuss the overseas distribution rights, each one angling for a piece of the revenue.
In the end, Shay went with Warner Bros., choosing to maintain continuity with the studio he already had the smoothest working relationship with.
“Finally done,” Adam said, stretching out in the expansive living room, looking at the finished pages in front of him.
The proposal hadn’t actually needed this long.
Having Angelina around, drifting in and out of the room all day, had made strict focus considerably harder to come by than it should have been.
She came in from outside a few minutes later, toweling off after a swim—the pool’s heating system meant the cooler November air barely mattered.
“Proposal’s done?
Script too?” she asked, settling onto the arm of the couch beside him, water still beading on her shoulders.
“Both done,” Adam said.
“And the female lead…?”
She asked it lightly, almost teasing, though there was something far more careful underneath it.
She had decided months ago that she would do whatever it took to elevate her status in the industry.
But having tasted the security and luxury of this life, she had absolutely no intention of going back to the grind of minor modeling gigs.
Asking outright for a role so directly tied to Adam’s new project left her exposed, but she needed to know exactly where she stood before he made his next move.