Chapter 4: Chapter 4

I had to get up early in order to catch a flight to New York where the company Milestone Media was located. We were not meeting at their headquarters but at a cafe nearby. Truthfully, I disliked New York as the traffic was always bad. Still, I would go there for my future.

The plane security was really tight, but I was already used to this. It was 2004 and the tragic event of 9/11 happened causing the security at the airports to be increased and the way they did things changed. Some people were even scared to fly, so it was not that difficult for me to find a last minute ticket. The price was not too bad either, and going from Michigan to New York was only a short flight.

I arrived at the airport and found a taxi that would take me to New York City at the cafe I was going to meet Dwayne at. It was nine in the morning so I had plenty of time to waste, but, I was going to meet my lawyer as well. It took the driver thirty minutes before I arrived in front of the cafe. He was a nice indian man who kept up a wonderful conversation. The ride was a bit expensive, but I still left him a tip.

The cafe was called Rosco’s located on Main street. The streets were crowded and the various cars that went back and forth kept blowing their horns. This was New York, a place with terrible traffic and bad drivers. I remember I was getting ready to turn when someone just zipped right past me cutting me off and almost causing an accident. That was the beginning of my road rage.

Inside the cafe I found myself sitting in a nice cozy corner close to the window. The cafe wasn’t full, but there was a decent line of people getting ready to buy their morning drink. I was not much of a coffee person as it always put me to sleep, so I just took out a notepad from my black backpack along with a pen. I was a little too old to be taking notes, but it never hurt to jot down a few points I had questions on.

People entered the cafe and exited, it was not until I was here for roughly ten minutes that a woman entered. She had short dark black hair, light skin, and a gergous pair of brown eyes. Seeing as she was looking around the cafe and her attire, I had a good feeling that she was searching for me. Many people always assumed I looked different based on my voice, but it was kind of fun to see their expression after we met. I raised my  hand slightly to let her know that I was here. Her eyes went a bit wide then she approached my table.

“Mr. Scott?”

I recongized her voice, this was the woman I conversed with yesterday. Sandra Lee. She was shorter than I was expecting. I stood at six feet, but she was around five-four.

Standing up I nodded my head and held out my hand. She smiled and shook it.

“Yes, how are you?”

“I’m fine, you?”

“Great! To be honest I was expecting someone else. This is somewhat of a surprise.” I told her honestly. She laughed a little.

“I must say the same goes for me. I don’t mean to be rude, but your voice doesn’t really match your appearance.”

“Not rude at all. I hear that a lot, so I’ve gotten used to it. Where should we begin?”

Sandra motioned for me to sit back down which I did, and she did the same. After she took out her briefcase along with some documents.

We got right down to business, Sandra told me the various options I could use to obtain the rights to the source material. I wanted to buy it outright, which she said some people did that but majority opted for the option to put down a percentage and pay the rest once the movie was out. We had to decide on the royalty fees for the characters which would be given once the movie was produced and hit theathers. There would also be future royalties involved if I made and prequel, sequels or used the characters again at a later date.

She told me it was best to keep it around 5% but she would try to get it lower than that. This was because there were other royalty fees involved in the production of a movie that I had to keep track of. I quickly realized after talking with her that there was a lot more involved than what I assumed that went into movie production. I tried not to let it show on my face, but I think she could tell.

I wasn’t sure how much time passed by, but I spotted a relatively tall black man enter the cafe. He was wearing a blue and orange stripped button up shirt with some black jeans. Seeing me glance his way he started to walk in my direction. It wasn’t hard to tell that I was the person he spoke with on the phone, considering Sandra was here with documents on the table.

“Hello, it is nice to meet you. We spoke on the phone but i’ll introduce myself again, i’m Dwayne McDuffie.”

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I quickly got up and shook his hand.

“Alex Scott. This is my lawyer Sandra Lee. Please, sit.”

Dwayne and Sandra both shook hands as he pulled up a chair to sit down. Before the negotiations began, he looked at me.

“Can I ask you a question. What made you reach out to me?”

“I just see a lot of potential in your work and want to bring attention to it. The things milestone are doing can shake the way people see superheroes. They have their own problems and a lot of movies seem to miss that point. The characters in that universe are relatable to a lot of people.”

“From the small bit i’ve read, he is right. There are too many Batman and Superman movies, it is kind of the same thing on repeat. With the introduction of the X-Men a few years back the world was introduced to more heroes, but there is still room for more. Look at Spiderman, he was a box office hit.” Sandra chimed in on the matter as well.

Hearing that, Dwayne seemed to be accepting of this meeting. I could tell by the way his body relaxed. Now all that was left was the negotiation. It surprised me that Sandra read a bit of the comics, I did not picture her for the type to be interested in that sort of thing. But then again, maybe she only read it to have a bit of background on the type of dealing she was doing.

Dwayne and Sandra mostly talked, they went over the original deal that I had given him, tweaked it to be in more favor of my company and in return Dwayne would have the luxury of being part of the team. He would have a say in the progress of script, which I planned on anyway. There was no way I was going to let a complete stranger take full control of the script writing without having read the source material. With him on board I could also gather some of the other writers in milestone to help my writer with the script.

Who best knew the universe but the creators. I wanted them to tell the story that they wanted to tell in the comics but in a more entertaining way. I already had a vision for how I wanted things to unfold and once this deal was sealed, I was already thinking of informing Dwayne.

It an hour before Dwayne started signing the paperwork. He dececided that I could have the rights to produce television shows and movies based off of the characters in the Dakotaverse. Of couse a milestones was linked to DC comics at this time so any work that involved characters that belonged to DC could not be used. Which was not an issue for me since DC characters were not on my mind.

The payment was a pretty large sum being 750,000 for the entire universe including any future characters that they would create. This deal was amazing for me since I could also give him ideas for future heroes. There were some heroes that I would have liked to see, but I planned on holding onto those for now. If everything worked out, then milestone media could become big.

“May I ask when you plan on producing these films? I know these things take time but i’m still curious about the timeframe.” Dwayne asked me.

“I have an idea to create the Dakotaverse on the big screen, giving each hero their own solo movie. Eventually they’d unite to face off against a great threat, sorry if I don’t know any villians that can cause enough trouble that they would all be needed. I’m still not caught up on the comics yet.”

Dwayne grinned. “Well, you’ll get there. I’m positive that there are quiet a few of them suited for the task. That sounds great, but Blood Syndicate has a lot of members, if you made solo films for them all that would take a very long time.”

“Well, I was not planning on doing that. I wanted to give Icon, Hardware, and Static their own films. With the Big Bang introducing members of the Blood Syndicate in the background. As for that gang, they would have a film dedicated to them forming and how they deal with their own issues. I find the dynamic between the members unquie as they always seem to have some sort of power struggle going on. Honestly, i’m not sure how they even manage to work together. Still, if any of them had a solo film it would not be until much later. For now I want to work on the three I stated before, with one film coming out six months after the last. Creating the universe and getting the plot down would be the biggest task, so I expect it to take two or three years before we even start filming.”

“Oh wow, i’ve never heard of anything like that before. It seems like you have a solid plan, if you need any help you are more than welcome to give us a call or stop by.”

I smiled. “I planned on doing just that.”

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