Have you been watching the box office or movies the way I have? I can’t say that I think a ton of these movies in the last year are “knocking me over” with some great acting or great stories. Given that I just saw Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull, I was greatly disappointed in the crafting and acting in the movie. Not up to the George Lucas par and quite frankly makes the Stars Wars 3 (where Anakin goes to the “dark side”) seem to be well-done. I am wondering if DVDS, smaller movies with less hype might be my “$8-10 ticket” to box-office happiness.
Whether a movie is a success at the box office doesn’t make it crucial for me to see, but typically I want to see something that I can really immerse myself into it. Michael Clayton was just such a movie and Oceans 13 was not. George Clooney was great in one and the other was a pile of doo-doo. I love well-done movies- that’s what makes the experience worth the $$ of going to the theater.
Next week Radar magazine is running a story on Hollywood’s A-list idols losing their movie-selling mojo which includes an exclusive earnings index by star name. It’s really interesting.
A-List Star power dramatically declines:
Will Smith and Johnny Depp have something to smile about: they are the only two stars who’s bankability numbers have risen: Will from 90 to 99 and Johnny from 78 to 92. (The question is whether Smith’s summer movie as the super-hero will actually be bankable and have legs — meaning keep people hitting the theater). Johnny Depp seems to be bullet-proof despite the weirdness of Pirates 3 and also the darkness of Sweeney Todd over the holidays.
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie might need a second mortgage on their newest $70 million chateau estate as theirs went from 96 to 86 and 80 to 59 respectively. Brad Pitt needs to pick better projects and Angelina needs to make sure she doesn’t typecast herself into action flicks because it’s getting old– fast.
A-List-er ratings have shrunk or — more aptly put– sunk– representing the most dramatic declines since tracking began in 1989. Radar commissioned James Ulmer, creator of the Ulmer Scale, Hollywood’s preeminent numerical ranking of actor power and prestige, to do a special tracking of the past decade’s biggest stars. This new ranking list appears in the July issue of Radar, on newsstands June 24th.
AList Star Declines
Tom Hanks: 98 ↓ 84
George Clooney: 91 ↓ 83
Tom Cruise: 98 ↓ 74 — is this a surprise?
Julia Roberts: 97 ↓ 67
Jim Carey: 94 ↓ 62
Reese Witherspoon: 67 ↓ 58
Question that Radar doesn’t seem to pose is where is Clint Eastwood, Bruce Willis, James McAvoy, Keira Knightley, Cate Blanchett, Daniel Day Lewis, Daniel Craig, Clive Owen, Sarah Jessica Parker, Diane Keaton, Hilary Swank, Patrick Dempsey, Pierce Brosnan, Don Cheadle and other mainstreamers?
However the article does question other things like why these people are in decline and what is the implication of this on the film industry?
What is causing the decline?
Is it because these actors tend to play it safe?
Have their lives changed signficantly to allow them more freedom to be extremely selective?
Or is it overexposure (including tabloid exposure), box office flops (does respectable numbers but not runaway hits count as a flop), or competition from the Internet and video games?
While I would dispute the video games, I do think that the availability for content from the web impacts both TV and films especially since you can see a movie very soon after release online.
Video gamers aren’t driven by box office names, they are driven by the movie itself– so X-Men as a sequence blew away Spiderman sequences because they were better written and well-done with plot lines and not just action lines threaded together with some dialogue.
However that’s MY take on things. Pick up the July issue of Radar and let me know what you think. If I can get an online link to the article, I will update this post. I have read the article but don’t want to be the “spoiler” and give you all the details before you have a chance to read it in context.
Stevie Wilson
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