The Maker: Hollywood

The rain in London fell in a steady, comfortable rhythm against the tall glass windows of the Soho office.

Joanne sat at her oak desk, a cup of Earl Grey tea cooling slowly next to her laptop. Her office was on the third floor of a renovated brick building. It was a beautiful, quiet space filled with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, thick rugs, and a leather reading chair in the corner. If she walked out her door and took the elevator down to the first floor, she would be standing in the bustling, fast-paced lobby of the TDM-UK branch—the European distribution hub for Miller Studios.

But up here, it was just her and the keyboard.

She stared at the blinking cursor on the screen, reading over the final paragraph she had just typed. She made a minor adjustment to a sentence about a Patronus, hit the period key, and let out a long, heavy breath.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was officially finished.

She leaned back in her chair, rubbing her tired eyes. She looked out the window at the wet London streets below, watching the colourful umbrellas bob along the sidewalks. It was hard to reconcile the reality of this warm, beautiful office with where she had been just a few years ago.

Back then, she had been broke, exhausted, and trying to stretch a single cup of black coffee for four hours at a cafe just to use their heating. She had been scribbling ideas on napkins, trying to find a publisher who would take another look at her work.

That was the exact cafe where Daniel Miller had walked in.

He hadn’t been with a massive entourage. Marcus Blackwood had been a few blocks away, arguing with some real estate agents about leasing the very building Joanne was currently sitting in. He had just walked into the cafe alone to escape the rain. He ordered a tea, sat at the small table next to hers, and noticed her furiously writing in a battered notebook. Which led to a conversation.

Daniel had a binder full of notes. He had the entire overarching plot of a story about a boy wizard, a magical boarding school, and a dark lord. He had the lore mapped out perfectly. But he had a problem. He had given the outline to his best friend, Tom Wiley, to draft the first book. Tom was a good writer, but he was an American kid who grew up in California. When Tom tried to write about a British boarding school, it sounded completely wrong. It lacked the English soul the story desperately needed to feel real.

Daniel had read a few pages of Joanne’s notebook right there in the cafe. He saw the way she described a simple rainy street and instantly knew she had the voice he was looking for. He had offered her the job on the spot.

Now, her name was on the cover of one of the fastest-selling book series in the world.

Joanne smiled, picking up her phone from the desk. When she had finished the second book, Chamber of Secrets, she had sent out a cryptic tweet that had driven the readers absolutely crazy. She figured it was a tradition worth keeping.

She opened Twitter and just typed:

Expecto Patronum. Book Three is off to the editors. Daniel really stepped up his A-game with the plot on this one. Keep your expectations high.

After posting, she tossed the phone back onto the desk and picked up her mug of tea.

It only took seconds for the internet to react.

The Harry Potter fanbase wasn’t just a group of casual readers. Under the massive marketing umbrella of Miller Studios, the books had become a legitimate cultural phenomenon. Midnight release parties had lines wrapping around city blocks.

Within ten minutes, Joanne’s tweet was trending globally.

On Reddit, the dedicated r/HarryPotter forums exploded into a frenzy of frantic theory-crafting. Thousands of users started dissecting the two Latin words. What was a Patronum? Who was the prisoner? But very quickly, because Joanne had specifically mentioned Daniel’s name, the conversation shifted away from the pages and onto the screen.

Daniel Miller wasn’t just an author.

User Gryffindor99 posted a thread that shot straight to the top of the main movie subreddit:

Okay, we all know Daniel Miller writes the story for these books. He owns the IP, too. Star Wars made a billion dollars. Iron Man is a massive hit. Inception is still making money. At what point does he announce the Harry Potter movies? Are we getting a cinematic universe?

The replies flooded in, completely hijacking the literary announcement.

User FilmJunkie: It’s basically a license to print money. If he applies the same practical effects and massive budgets he uses for Star Wars, it would be the biggest movie of the decade.

User WandMaker: He has to. The world-building is too visual just to be left in a book. But what about the cast? You can’t just put famous Hollywood actors in these roles. They have to be actual British kids.

User BoxOfficeNerd: Miller is probably just waiting to finish Star Wars. But honestly, if he announces Harry Potter tomorrow, Warner Bros might actually file for bankruptcy out of pure despair LOL.

User Juror8: While I’d like to agree to the above sentiment. Warner Bros isn’t going bankrupt anytime soon. People don’t realise how big of a legacy these studios carry.

The internet was completely unified in its demand. They wanted the movies, and they were treating it as an inevitable reality. Fan-casting threads popped up on Twitter, articles were hastily written by entertainment blogs speculating on potential release dates, and the hype train left the station at full speed.

And Daniel Miller was completely oblivious to all of it, because he currently couldn’t feel his face.

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A thousand miles away from the warm, cozy office in Soho, the weather in Finse, Norway, was hell for the cast of The Empire Strikes Back.

The Hardangerjøkulen glacier was a barren slab of ice situated at the highest point of the Bergen railway line, currently being battered by a severe whiteout blizzard.

The lobby of the Finse 1222 hotel was the only refuge. It was a sturdy, rustic building made of thick wood and stone. A massive fireplace roared in the center of the main sitting area, throwing off waves of intense heat.

Daniel sat in a heavy leather armchair, leaning as close to the fire as he could without actually catching his socks on fire. He was wearing thermal long underwear, thick cargo pants, two sweaters, and a heavy parka that was currently unzipped, dripping melted snow onto the hardwood floor.

He held a mug of boiling black tea between his hands, trying to thaw out his fingers.

On the sofa across from him, Florence and Christian looked like they had just survived a shipwreck.

Florence was wrapped in a thick wool blanket over her white Leia snowsuit. Her hair was damp and plastered to her forehead. She was holding a mug of hot water with lemon, just staring blankly at the flames.

Christian was sitting next to her, rubbing his hands together briskly. His blue Han Solo parka was currently draped over a wooden chair near the fire, steaming as the snow melted off the synthetic fur hood.

”I’m just saying,” Bale grumbled, his Welsh accent thick with cold. ”The prop department really needs to figure out something for the blasters. I tried to pull the trigger during that last take, and the whole thing was frozen. It’s basically a block of ice shaped like a gun.”

”Just make the pew-pew noises with your mouth, Christian, they’ll fix it in post,” Sebastian Stan mumbled from his spot on the rug.

Sebastian was lying flat on his back on the thick carpet directly in front of the hearth, staring up at the wooden ceiling beams. He hadn’t bothered to take his boots off.

”You’re awfully quiet down there, Seb,” Daniel noted, taking a slow sip of his tea.

”I’m trying to figure out if I have frostbite,” Sebastian said without moving his head. ”I can’t feel my toes. I think they snapped off inside my boots. If I take the boots off, they’re just going to rattle out onto the floor like ice cubes.”

Florence finally blinked, turning her head slightly to look at Daniel. ”You told me the emotional scenes would be the hardest part.”

”They usually are,” Daniel said.

”I tried to yell at him,” Florence said, pointing a thumb vaguely at Bale. ”We were doing the scene by the shield generator doors. I knew my lines. I had the motivation. But my jaw was frozen shut. It looked like I was just grunting at him through my teeth. I feel like an idiot now.”

Bale let out a rough laugh. ”It was quite intimidating, actually. Very primal.”

”It’s going to look great on camera,” Daniel promised them. ”The audience is going to see the ice literally forming on your eyelashes. You can’t fake that in a warm studio in California.”

”I’d take a warm studio in California over anything right now,” Sebastian sighed.

Before anyone else could complain about the elements, the heavy wooden front doors of the hotel blew open.

A swirling vortex of freezing wind and white snow blasted into the lobby, scattering a stack of newspapers on a nearby table.

Standing in the doorway was a man who looked like an abominable snowman. He was covered head to toe in thick white powder, wearing a bright orange, obnoxiously loud ski jacket, and holding a small, black digital vlogging camera out in front of his face on a short tripod grip.

”What’s up, my dudes!” Jack Black roared, his voice booming through the quiet lobby. He turned the camera on himself, grinning wildly despite the ice clinging to his beard. ”We have arrived at the frozen tundra! The ice planet! Finse, Norway, baby! Look at this place, it’s like a freezer full of sadness!”

Jack kicked the heavy door shut behind him with his boot, cutting off the howl of the blizzard. He shook himself like a wet dog, sending a spray of snow across the floor.

Christian Bale buried his face in his hands. Florence actually smiled for the first time in three hours.

Jack Black was Chewbacca. He had brought an incredible, chaotic, and weirdly perfect energy to the Wookiee in the first movie, entirely avoiding the traditional ”walking carpet” stereotype by giving the character a ton of physical comedy and heart. Since the first Star Wars, Jack’s career had exploded, not just in Hollywood, but on the internet as well. He had started a YouTube channel on a whim, posting behind-the-scenes vlogs and ridiculous music videos, and it had grown to millions of subscribers.

He was supposed to be in Finse yesterday with the rest of the cast.

”Jack,” Daniel said, setting his tea down. ”You’re twenty-four hours late.”

”I know, boss, I know,” Jack said, turning the camera off and stuffing it into the pocket of his bright orange jacket. He walked over to the fire, rubbing his hands together. ”The logistics of getting to this mountain are insane. Also, I missed the train in Oslo yesterday because I was filming a video for the channel.”

”A video?” Tom Wiley asked, walking into the lobby from the hallway, holding a clipboard. ” We have a multi-million dollar production here, and you missed that… for a vlog?”

”It wasn’t just a vlog, Tom, it was a cultural immersion,” Jack defended himself, completely unbothered by Tom’s stressed tone. ”I found a guy in an alley who sells fermented shark meat. Apparently, it’s a local delicacy. I ate it on camera. Man, it tasted like battery acid, but the footage is absolute gold. Anyway, I brought snacks.”

He unzipped the front of his jacket and started pulling out crumpled bags of Norwegian potato chips and a massive, squished brick of milk chocolate. He tossed the chocolate onto Sebastian’s chest.

Sebastian groaned as the heavy chocolate hit him, but he weakly grabbed it. ”Thanks, Chewie.”

”See? Morale’s already improving,” Jack grinned, pulling off his wet gloves and holding his hands out to the fire. He looked around at the freezing actors. ”Alright, so what did I miss? We blow anything up yet?”

”Nothing much. We stood in a ditch for eight hours, though,” Bale said flatly.

”Awesome,” Jack nodded. ”Well, I’m ready to suit on. Come on. Let’s make some cinema.”

The sheer, ridiculous warmth of Jack’s presence completely broke the miserable tension in the room. You couldn’t stay angry or depressed when Jack Black was in the room handing out crushed potato chips and talking about fermented shark. Daniel leaned back in his chair, feeling the exhaustion settle deep into his bones, but he was smiling. The cast was finally all together.

The next morning, the blizzard hadn’t stopped. If anything, the wind was howling louder, rattling the thick glass windows of the hotel.

But his schedule didn’t care about the weather. They weren’t shooting outside today. They were shooting in the ice cave.

The art department, led by Dante Ferretti and Sam, had spent three weeks before the cast arrived constructing a massive, intricate set inside a nearby, unheated storage hangar a few hundred yards from the hotel. It wasn’t a real glacier cave, but it felt like one. The walls were molded from translucent fiberglass and heavy plastics, painted in pale, ghostly blues and whites to mimic thousands of years of compressed ice.

Because the hangar was unheated to protect the delicate paint and fake snow from melting, the temperature inside the set was exactly the same as the temperature outside. It was freezing.

Daniel stood in the center of the cave set, wearing his heavy parka and a beanie.

Above him, hanging from the ceiling of the artificial cave, was Sebastian Stan.

Sebastian was wearing a heavy, hidden stunt harness under his costume. Thick steel cables ran from the harness, through the fiberglass ceiling, up to a massive pulley system on the catwalk above. He was hoisted completely upside down by his ankles.

A team of three special effects technicians were standing on ladders, carefully packing heavy, wet artificial snow around Sebastian’s boots, making it look like his feet were frozen into the roof of the cavern.

His face was already flushed a dark, painful shade of red from all the blood rushing to his head. His eyes looked slightly bloodshot.

”You hanging in there, Seb?” Daniel called up to him.

”I’ve been better,” he grunted, his voice tight. ”My brain feels like it’s going to pop out of my ears, for some reason.”

”We’ll move fast,” Daniel promised. ”We just need to get the Wampa introduction and the lightsaber grab. You won’t be up there for more than twenty minutes.”

”Just roll the cameras, please.” He wheezed.

”Bring the monster in,” Daniel told his assistant director.

A set of heavy double doors at the back of the hangar rolled open.

The crew on the floor went quiet. Even in a brightly lit room filled with cameras and technicians, the thing walking toward them was genuinely unsettling.

Daniel had absolutely refused to use a guy in a green spandex suit covered in ping-pong balls for the Wampa. He hated the weightless, disconnected feel of fully CGI monsters. He wanted something real. Something that cast a real shadow and took up space in the room.

The Wampa was a practical suit, built by the best creature workshop in London. It was worn by a massive, seven-foot-two stuntman named Greg. The suit was covered in thick, matted synthetic white fur, stained with fake brown dirt and blood around the mouth and claws. The head was a heavy animatronic piece. Two puppeteers standing behind the camera operated the facial expressions via remote control. The lips could snarl, the heavy brows could furrow, and the black, dead-looking eyes could track movement.

It looked like a polar bear that had mutated into a nightmare.

Greg walked onto the set, the heavy suit restricting his movements just enough to give the monster a slow, lumbering, terrifying gait. He stopped underneath where Sebastian was hanging.

Sebastian looked down—or technically up—at the massive creature. His eyes widened a little.

”Okay, that’s actually horrible,” Sebastian muttered.

”Good,” Daniel said, stepping closer to the camera operator. ”That’s the reaction I want. Listen to me, Sebastian. Forget that you’re a Jedi. Forget that you blew up the Death Star in the last movie. Right now, you are just a kid from a farm who is hanging upside down in the cold, and a bear’s about to eat you.”

Sebastian nodded as best as he could while hanging from his ankles.

”Don’t look confident,” Daniel continued, pointing at him. ”You are panicked. You are desperate. When you reach for the lightsaber in the snow, I want to see you struggling against the cold and your own body weight. It should look like you are barely going to make it.”

”Got it,” Sebastian said, his breathing sounding a little shallower now.

Daniel signaled the camera operator. Mike gave a thumbs-up.

”Sound rolling,” the mixer called.

”Action,” he said.

The animatronic puppeteers hit their controls. The Wampa threw its head back and let out a horrific, roaring snarl, swiping a massive, clawed hand at the air.

Sebastian didn’t have to act. Hanging upside down was brutal on his core muscles. He twisted his torso, reaching his arm down toward the fake snow beneath him, where his prop lightsaber was buried. His face was twisted in genuine discomfort and panic. He strained, his fingers clawing at the empty air, trying to use the Force to pull the weapon to him.

He squeezed his eyes shut. The prop department pulled a hidden monofilament wire attached to the lightsaber hilt, yanking it up out of the snow and straight into Sebastian’s waiting hand.

Sebastian caught it, his eyes snapping open. He swung the unlit hilt downward, pantomiming the strike against the monster.

”Cut!” Daniel yelled. ”That was perfect. Get him down.”

The grips on the catwalk immediately released the tension on the pulley system. Sebastian was lowered quickly but gently to the floor. The technicians broke the fake snow away from his boots and unhooked the cables.

Sebastian collapsed onto his back on the foam mats covering the floor, taking deep, gasping breaths, his face slowly returning to a normal color.

”You okay, man?” Jack Black asked, walking over in his heavy Chewbacca suit, holding out a hand.

Sebastian grabbed Jack’s furry hand and let the bigger man pull him to his feet. ”Yeah. I’m good. I just need to sit.”

”Take a break, Seb,” Daniel said, walking over and patting him on the shoulder. ”We got the shot.”

”It really was,” Sebastian agreed, rubbing the back of his neck. ” fuck, that suit is terrifying.”

By eight o’clock that evening, the wind had died down to a dull whistle, and the sky was clear, revealing millions of stars shining brightly over the glacier.

Inside Daniel’s hotel room, the temperature was a comfortable eighty degrees. He had found a small, electric space heater in a storage closet and dragged it into his room, plugging it in next to his desk and cranking the dial to the absolute maximum setting.

Tom Wiley was sitting on the edge of the bed, holding a plate of lukewarm, slightly sad-looking hotel salmon. Daniel was sitting at the small desk, clicking through the digital dailies on his laptop.

”The Wampa footage looks incredible,” Tom mumbled around a bite of fish. ”The lighting bouncing off the white fur makes it look massive. You were right, man. CGI would have looked too smooth.”

”The imperfections make it real,” Daniel agreed, watching the playback of Sebastian struggling to grab the lightsaber. The red flush on his face sold the reality of the scene perfectly.

His cell phone, sitting on the desk next to the laptop, buzzed loudly, vibrating against the wood.

He picked it up. It was Elena calling from Burbank, where it was early morning.

”Tell me nothing’s burning down,” he answered, leaning back in his chair.

”Nothing is burning, but the internet is currently having a meltdown,” her voice came through the speaker, sounding highly amused. ”Did you tell Joanne to post that tweet?”

He frowned, confused. ”What tweet? I haven’t talked to her in a month. She’s supposed to be finishing the third book.”

”She did actually,” Elena informed him. ”And then she went on to tweet that it was off to the editors, and she specifically namedropped you.”

He rubbed his eyes, letting out a heavy sigh. Joanne loved riling up the fans.

”And?” he asked. ”That’s a good thing. It builds the hype ”

”It is,” Elena agreed. ”But the fans didn’t stop at the book. The internet is currently demanding to know when Miller Studios are going to announce the Harry Potter movies. Twitter is flooded with fan-casting. Reddit has fifty different threads predicting release dates. My office phones have been ringing off the hook all morning. I have executives from Universal and Paramount calling to ask if we want co-distribution rights for a film franchise that doesn’t even exist yet.”

Tom stopped chewing his salmon. He looked over at Daniel. They both knew exactly how valuable the Harry Potter IP was. It was a cultural juggernaut. If they applied the Miller Studios production machine to Hogwarts, it would be a license to print money for the next decade.

”They want the movies,” she said, her voice turning slightly more serious. ”What do you want me to tell them? Do we issue a press release to calm it down, or do we fan the flames?”

Daniel looked at the frozen, miserable footage of Hoth playing on his laptop screen. He thought about the logistics of casting dozens of British children, building massive castle sets, and committing to an eight-film production schedule while he was still trying to manage the Marvel universe and finish Star Wars.

”Tell the executives to stop calling,” Daniel said, keeping his voice steady. ”And don’t issue a press release. Just let it be.”

”You don’t want to capitalize on the hype?” she asked, sounding slightly surprised.

”Not right now,” Daniel said. He reached out and paused the footage on his screen. ”A Hogwarts franchise is a massive undertaking, Elena. It requires total focus, and I don’t have it right now. If we do it, we do it right. But right now?”

Daniel looked over at Tom, offering a small, tired smile.

”Put a pin in the wizards, Elena,” Daniel said. ”I have to blow up a shield generator in a blizzard tomorrow.”

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A/N: Read ahead on Patreon: /AmaanS