With studios cutting budgets & branded film franchises storming the box office, being a movie star is a risky business
Movie
stars, in so many ways, are over. Here, typically, and according to
common industry knowledge, branded franchises have replaced
traditional star vehicles (eight out of the top ten global
box-office hits of 2012 were franchise films, only one of which -
Men In Black 3 - was a star vehicle) while domestic
box-office receipts in the States have fallen to a 16-year low
($10.2bn in 2011), resulting in a brutal cutback on actual movie
production - only 104 studio movies were made in Hollywood in 2011,
as opposed to 131 in 2006. Add to this the competition from social
media and quality television, the rise of starbaiting celebrity
culture, and the dominance of overseas box office (roughly 70 per
cent of Hollywood tickets are sold to international audiences who
are ostensibly drawn to spectacle, simplicity and sparse amounts of
dialogue) and you have a doomsday scenario for a star system that
has nothing left to offer but overpriced fees and paltry
returns.
