A killer who believed he was performing a public service.
A villain who thought he was teaching people the value of the lives they were actively throwing away.
In fifteen years of reading coverage and tearing through specs, Derek had never seen anything quite like it.
He knew the business well enough not to guarantee a box office hit—audiences were too fickle for certainty, and there was no empirical way to predict how the public would react to a villain this psychologically dense.
But Derek had been navigating this industry long enough to recognize when a risk was actually an opportunity.
His gut told him this was one of those rare times.
If the bet failed, he figured he would probably be forced out of the agency and have to start over somewhere smaller.
At thirty-four, he had zero interest in spending the rest of his career climbing the middle rungs of this ladder.
He wanted a seat among the senior partners who actually ran the building.
This script, if executed properly, was the kind of undeniable leverage that could get him there.
Across the desk, Adam sat in deliberate silence, watching Derek’s face.
He didn’t need to ask; he could already tell the pitch had landed exactly the way he had engineered it to.
The next step was simple on paper: let Derek do his job and find a studio willing to finance the picture.
But before any of that happened, Adam had a logistical necessity to handle himself.
He needed to register the script with both the Writers Guild and the Directors Guild.
It wasn’t just about protecting the material from being poached; it was about locking down the underlying rights to Saw on paper, cementing his ownership in a way no studio executive could quietly maneuver away from him later.
Adam already knew exactly what this story was worth over the next two decades.
He knew the trajectory of the sequels, the spin-offs, and the merchandise he hadn’t even hinted at to Derek yet.
If he had to give up a larger cut of his upfront directing fee to ensure the franchise rights stayed in his hands, it was a trade he would make without a second thought.
The real money was in the copyright, and he was confident he would earn back any short-term losses a hundred times over.
“So,” Adam finally asked, keeping his voice carefully level.
“Do you think this is something we can actually move on?”
“Of course,” Derek said, abandoning the standard agent detachment.
“You’re the genius director I’ve been selling to the floor.
This is the first time you’ve actually handed me the proof.”
He meant it.
For Derek, this was the moment Adam’s theoretical reputation finally translated into a tangible asset—something he could carry into a room full of people who mattered.
From this point forward, their fortunes were tethered.
If the film worked, they both ascended.
If it didn’t, the collateral damage would hit them both, though Derek knew the fall would break Adam.
The kid had no family money to fall back on and no second chances waiting for him if he blew his debut.
Neither of them could afford a misstep.
“I’ll start quietly putting feelers out for the financing,” Derek said, leaning forward.
“In the meantime, you start preparing like we already have a green light.
Because if this works, our entire future depends on it.”
Adam stood up and shook his hand.
Neither of them felt the need to add anything else.
The project had already become far bigger than a simple conversation in a mid-level office.
The next morning, Derek walked into the agency’s main conference room early, the Saw proposal tucked securely under his arm.
CAA operated differently from almost every other company in the Hollywood ecosystem.
Every agent in the building held a stake in the place, meaning it functioned less like a traditional corporate hierarchy and more like a series of overlapping fiefdoms, each built around a handful of A-list clients.
Derek worked across several of those teams, picking up commissions wherever he could make himself useful.
It was a lucrative living—even an agent without a marquee client could earn solid money under CAA’s structure.
But Derek didn’t just want money.
He wanted standing.
He wanted a name that commanded respect on its own.
The room slowly filled as dozens of agents found their seats, trading industry gossip before the meeting officially commenced.
At the head of the long table sat Michael Ovitz, the man who ran the agency and its most formidable founding partner.
He possessed a quiet, gravitational authority.
He didn’t need to raise his voice to bring the room to order; he simply tapped the table once, and the ambient noise vanished.
“We’ve built CAA into the strongest agency in this town,” Ovitz began, his voice steady and calm.
“But we still have a vulnerability.
If we want the studios to keep accepting our packaging deals—if we want to keep forcing them to buy our bundled talent instead of negotiating piece by piece—we need directors.
Specifically, we need directors who can consistently make these studios money.
That is the only leverage that actually matters.”
He let the silence hold the weight of his point before moving on.
“So.
Has anyone signed someone worth talking about this week?”
A few agents spoke up, offering minor updates on mid-tier talent that drew little reaction.
When the moment felt right, Derek stepped forward and slid the proposal onto the table in front of Ovitz.
“This is a project from a director I recently signed out of USC.
Adam Cole,” Derek said.
“There’s a full script in there, a comprehensive treatment, and a budget breakdown.
It’s a contained horror feature.
The obstacle right now is funding.
I’d like the agency’s weight behind finding someone to back it.”
“A USC director.” Ovitz’s interest sharpened a fraction as he opened the folder.
Immediately, the presentation stood out.
The script’s format was immaculate, the budget realistic and clean.
It was the kind of administrative heavy lifting that first-time directors rarely bothered to do, mostly because it was technically a producer’s job.
Handing over something this complete told Ovitz that this kid either had an incredibly sharp mentor, or he possessed a terrifying understanding of how the machine actually worked.
He started reading.
It didn’t take long for the antagonist to hook him.
It wasn’t just a faceless stuntman in a rubber mask; it was a villain with a chilling, articulate point of view.
Ovitz had read enough scripts in his life to know that a film lived or died on its foundation.
A director’s only real job was to translate that foundation through a camera lens.
Based on what he was holding, the foundation of Saw was bulletproof.
Which meant the only real variable left was the execution.
All this project needed was an experienced, hard-nosed producer to manage the budget, keep the rookie director from indulging in his own ambition, and ensure the mistakes were kept to an absolute minimum.