Brad Pitt has claimed, in a recent interview, that the days of the big Hollywood salary ($20 million plus whatever profit participation) are over. Is he right? metro.co.uk/2012/09/11/brad-pitt-waves-goodbye-to-big-bucks-as-fresh-faces-swoop-on-hollywood-571843/ I think Pitts speaking about the fact Hollywood is currently still facing a situation in which theres less money available to finance pictures, and so the desire is to cut budgets while trying to rely on branding to increase the chances of a films success. Branding can include a recognizable project, a recognizable filmmaker, a recognizable star, or a highly popular genre and similarities to other successful films in the genre. While star power rises and falls in terms of its importance in selling a project to audiences -- lately, some big name stars have been unable to save films that flopped miserably -- the truth is that it really depends on a lot of factors that Hollywood often doesnt take into consideration. The age of a star and their fanbase, the current media image of a star, other negative/bad impressions of the project that outweigh the stars power, other films at the box office pulling most of the viewership, etc. So while most of the time a really big and popular star might tend to guarantee more success for a film, other times the star power can fail to overcome other problems and obstacles for the film. Yet for some reason, Hollywood and the media have blinders on when it comes to realistically and calmly assessing stars and box office. A star can have ten huge hits in a row, but then one film flops and the headlines scream Gasp! Are His/Her Days As A Big Star Over?? It reminds me of 3D films, where a drop in viewership for a few films led a lot of professionals to declare that 3D was dead and asserting with total confidence that the fad was going to be over by years end. Right now, for example, everyones in a big hurry to proclaim Tom Cruises star power is over etc etc etc, and its just silly and shortsighted in the extreme. Cruise is a huge star, his international pull is massive, and the reason Rock of Ages flopped is due to the film itself, its marketing, and the box office field around it when it released, NOT because Cruise suddenly stopped being a hit star in the few months between Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol and Rock of Ages, for goodness sake. The point is, star power remains and will likely always remain as a factor in filmmaking. And as long as there are some stars who are popular with audiences and whose presense in a film will bring a significant fanbase and grant the film a certain built-in familiarity, there will be stars earning big bucks, including $20 million or more. Robert Downey, Jr., earned more than $50 MILLION for The Avengers. That includes the basic salary plus points on the films earnings. Vin Diesel commands $20 million per film, and probably will for many years to come. Tom Cruise will remain a big draw and probably continue earning $20 million or more per film for quite some time. And so on. I think that its true that the number of stars who can command such large salaries will shrink, especially since there are several such high-paid stars whose box office performance honestly doesnt justify that kind of salary but theyve somehow managed to earn it for a while. And some studios are notorious for budget-cutting and insisting stars take smaller salaries to appear in their high profile films, and those studios seem to overall be even more reluctant lately to shell out high dollar paychecks amid reduced spending on film budgets. So I think Pitt was referring to the days of a large number of such highly paid stars, and the fact that studios are listening to bean counters a lot more in the current economic environment. There will be far fewer big salaried stars. But I dont agree that there will be NO such highly paid stars anymore, and I suspect that in fact even the belt-tightening thats currently taking place is a phase, and when money starts flowing freely again -- as it inevitably will, make no mistake about that -- then well see a lot more stars making big wages once again.
Posted on: Sun, 02 Nov 2014 00:59:44 +0000
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