Kristen Stewart tops Forbes' list this year of Hollywood's highest paid actresses. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Forbes’ new list of Hollywood’s highest paid actresses this year places “Twilight” star Kristen Stewart at the top, illustrating yet again screenwriter William Goldman’s adage that in that glittery burg, nobody knows anything. Like primitive tribes, these superstitious folk continue to misunderstand what causes the rain of good fortune to fall, and their lavishing of ridiculous sums on people like Ms. Stewart is the equivalent of Ramses burying pots of gold to appease the gods.
Stewart, who was a total unknown who had appeared in a few minor films before the first “Twilight” movie was released just three and a half years ago, has raked in some $34.5 million this year because the “Twilight” films are hits and she is now being paid as though she were an investor in the property, with a share of the gargantuan profits. But the saga was a smash in book form long before she became Bella, and any one of a hundred other actresses could have swooned and bared her neck as prettily as Stewart. In a couple of years, we’ll be talking about similar fortunes being scooped up by Jennifer Lawrence, as though people lined up to see “The Hunger Games” saying, “I can’t wait to see this new Jennifer Lawrence film!”
Five years ago the highest-paid actress was Reese Witherspoon. She is still perky, still talented and still in her 30s, yet she is no longer in the top ten. Why? And why did several of her classmates in the 2007 Miss Popularity club — including Renée Zellweger, Jodie Foster, Halle Berry and Drew Barrymore — likewise disappear from the list? They’re all still skilled and still attractive. They just haven’t had a hit lately. And they haven’t had a hit because audiences weren’t attracted to the stories their movies were telling. Zellweger, in fact, has only starred in two live-action movies that earned more than $100 million in her 18-year career. Not that lack of popularity consigns an actress to the poor house: Based solely on dusty “Sex and the City” reruns and endorsements, Sarah Jessica Parker made it to the top ten content this year. The number of hit properties she’s had while playing anyone but Carrie Bradshaw is, after 30 years on the big and small screen, a stubborn zero.
So the highest-paid stars don’t appear in many hits. What about the biggest movies? Do they feature a lot of stars? Not really. Look at the list of this year’s most successful movies. Did people line up to see “Prometheus,” “Madagascar 3,” “The Lorax” or “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island” because of the actors in them? After 15 years, Tobey Maguire is still waiting for his first non-”Spider-Man” hit, Christian Bale’s 25 years onscreen haven’t yielded a smash in which he wasn’t wearing a bat suit, and even Will Smith and Johnny Depp, who are thought to be the two most bankable stars on Earth, suffered a disappointment and an outright flop this May with “Men in Black III” and “Dark Shadows.”
Once upon a time, a Cary Grant or a Humphrey Bogart meant a certain brand of movie, and audiences were comfortable with the signals they sent. Today, though, behind massive ad campaigns costing tens of millions of dollars, each new studio picture creates (or tries to create) its own brand, and if the special effects look sufficiently boggling, the jokes funny or the story interesting in the TV commercials, audiences show up on opening night (even the justly-derided “Green Lantern” earned a robust $22 million on its maiden Friday). Word of mouth means it keeps playing, or doesn’t.
But star power has very little to do with a film’s success. Only a Hollywood exec could look at the list of the all-time highest earning movies and think, “Wow, audiences sure love those Daniel Radcliffe, Hayden Christensen and Shia LaBeouf pictures! Let’s give them all a share of the profits!” Sam Worthington starred in “Terminator: Salvation” ($372 million gross), “Clash of the Titans” ($493 million) and “Avatar” ($2.8 billion) — and yet audiences still don’t know who he is. He’s so anonymous that his name wasn’t even featured on the poster for this year’s “Wrath of the Titans” (which disappointed with $301 million).
The only woman on this year’s list of high earners who had anything to do with crafting a story that appealed to the audience is Kristen Wiig, the hilarious former “Saturday Night Live” star Kristen Wiig, who got an Oscar nomination for co-writing “Bridesmaids,” one of last year’s most profitable movies. Now that she’s a star, though, her next project is, with Ben Stiller, the long-gestating film “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” Will audiences like it? Who knows? All we know is that Wiig is being paid a lot more than she was two years ago.
Source: HERE
No comments:
Post a Comment