A shift in star power?
Ever since the advent of CGI and big special effects driven movies, you see articles posing the question is star power on the wane? The July 4th weekend box office should add fuel to that fire. Per the LAT:
“Transformers: Dark of the Moon” demolished its enemies at the domestic box office this weekend, but the film really made a killing overseas.
The 3-D movie, the third in a franchise about alien robots that transform into vehicles, opened in the U.S. and Canada on Tuesday night and has since raked in $181.1 million, according to an estimate from distributor Paramount Pictures. While that’s a very solid domestic start for the film, the movie’s six-day ticket sales still fell short of the second “Transformers” film, “Revenge of the Fallen.” That film, which did not have the benefit of 3-D ticket surcharges, collected $214 million in the same time frame in 2009. But international grosses for “Dark of the Moon” were far higher than they were for “Revenge of the Fallen.” The latest “Transformers” got off to an excellent start abroad this weekend, taking in $217 million from 58 markets –- 51% ahead of “Revenge of the Fallen’s” $129.6 million opening.
The two other new films that opened over the holiday weekend, “Larry Crowne” and “Monte Carlo,” did not generate fireworks at the box office. “Larry Crowne,” an adult comedy directed, co-written by and starring Tom Hanks along with Julia Roberts, grossed $15.6 million over the four-day weekend — a relatively small opening for a film starring two A-list movie stars. “Monte Carlo,” a teen romance starring Disney Channel star Selena Gomez, collected a similarly modest $8.8 million.
Have there been two bigger stars in the last two decades than Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts? For more data, Box Office Mojo reports these:
Worldwide B.O.: $16,007,000
Production Budget: $30 million
Per Screen Average (Domestic): 2,973 theaters, $4,375
Pretty unremarkable numbers. And in order to reach a profit — per the studio’s definition — the movie will have to deal with the profit participation deal the two leads had on this project. If it’s their standard gross profit deal, the studios may have trouble making money on this one.
And that’s one of the reasons why studios prefer big special effects movies: They don’t have to make profit participation deals with SFX houses. That’s one less mouth to feed out of the profit pool.
This is a sea change from the way things used to be. In William Goldman’s book “Adventures in the Screen Trade,” arguably still the best thing written about the profession of screenwriting, this is what he wrote about stars:
Today, you must give the star everything… There is no single more important commercial element in screenplay writing than the star part. As we’ve seen over and over, studios crave stars…
The book was written in 1983. That attitude prevailed in Hollywood for decades. Today? Do fans race to see Transformers 3 because of Shia LeBeouf? I doubt it.
What does this mean for screenwriters? The studios still want stars. But broaden your perspective about what that term means. With digital technologies, a movie’s star can be the sheer spectacle of it, the actors bit players in a much larger visual and narrative arena.
And if you need any proof of this, just look at the movies of Roland Emmerich:
http://movieclips.com/e/nM7t/0/133.383/
http://movieclips.com/e/ZekQV/0/133.283/
http://movieclips.com/e/3TpU7/0/55.639/
And now “Singularity”.
For more of the LAT article, go here.
UPDATE: Talk about timely! Patrick Goldstein at The Big Picture posts this article today comparing the NBA and NFL lockout treatment to the way Hollywood is treating its movie stars:
On the surface, the sports and Hollywood labor disputes seem to have a lot in common. After all, if there were ever an entity whose rulers bore a strikingly close resemblance to the mandarins who run the entertainment business, it would be the NFL, a fabulously successful sports enterprise with the wealthiest owners, the smallest salaries and players with the shortest careers that has still decided it needs to squeeze a better deal from its on-the-field talent.
But the fact is, Hollywood execs have some advantages that the owners of the big pro sports teams don’t.
Just a few short years ago, studios felt compelled to pay top dollar to stars who could open big summer movies. But nowadays, its almost impossible to find a major summer franchise film (excepting “Pirates of the Caribbean”) anchored to a major star. “Thor’s” Chris Hemsworth suddenly has a lot in common with the Oklahoma City Thunder’s Russell Westbrook — they’re both fresh-faced players that work for a relatively cheap price.
Judging from this summer’s output of star-free studio movies, the major difference between the sports world and Hollywood is that showbiz moguls have actually found a way to promote their product without having to rely on the costliest element in the talent equation — the star. “X-Men” and “Transformers” are saleable brands, even without a big name on the marquee. The studios are operating a lot like small-market sports teams like the Tampa Bay Rays — they’re building box-office behemoths using younger, comparatively underpaid talent.
“All these acrimonious labor disputes in sports derive from the owners believing that the players have gotten too big a piece of the pie,” said veteran movie producer Joe Roth, who is the majority owner of the Seattle Sounders soccer club. “Hollywood is doing the same thing, but simply in a quieter way. They’re using the reduction of DVD revenues as a legitimate, and often not so legitimate, excuse to cut back on talent expenses and downsize their labor force.”
Note the operative words: and often not so legitimate. And targets are not just movie stars now, but directors and writers.
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