One reason Depp is paid $20m or more per movie is that his name above the credits is supposed to guarantee that an audience will show up. There is no sentimentality about this. Stars are still what sell movies and one like Depp is regarded as an insurance policy against failure. As the Hollywood director Joel Schumacher once observed: "If their relatives could do what we do, they [studio executives] would hire them instead." The flip side is that when failure comes, the stars are the first to be blamed.
