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UPFRONTS 2013: The Overachievers 
Today, The Hollywood Reporter does an AMPTP-friendly story about how Hollywood’s big-name movie stars aren’t pulling in the money they once did at the box office. What the trade fails to point out in its chart is that all but one of the actors are CAA clients. The one who’s not is Leo DiCaprio, who continues to have no agency representation. And, to be fair, Vince Vaughn only just went to CAA from United Talent. But the rest — Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Jim Carrey, Will Ferrell — are all part of CAA’s very crowded A-list stable. And notice how Tom Cruise isn’t even mentioned. Meanwhile, explain to me how the moguls are gonna sell movies here and abroad if they keep trying hard during these SAG talks to devalue actors?
For more estimates listed by title, see box office results here...Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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Somehow I doubt if the moguls comments during SAG talks, regarding devaluation of actors or anything else, will have ANY IMPACT at all on their ability to sell movies by star power in the future.
ummm, sorry to be dense but your post makes no sense. what does the fact that most of the folks are at CAA have to do with the price of fish?
as for selling movies here and/or abroad…what does actor (star) pay have to do with how films are marketed and sold? they either work or don’t. and when high priced stars appear in highly marketed bombs, it’s sort of natural to want to “devalue” those stars, wouldn’t you say?
CAA is becoming a crap factory. Crappy Artists Agency?
Moreover, it’s a good thing the mega pay to actors is dying out. Actors do not make a film successful. A well made movie makes a film successful, as well as an elusive alchemy that can’t be bottled much to the frustration of studios.
All of these people are grossly overcompensated and self-important, audiences are sick of seeing the same merry-go-round of faces, and the male actors (Brad Pitt, Jim Carrey, etc) are too old. Men do not get better with age, though they might like to believe so.
The pay has to be a bit more evenly distributed to breathe life into more and better quality films.
While the ulterior motive of the article may be to downplay the worth of actors, it does have a point.
The majority of Hollywood’s A-List are paid waaaay above their value as box-office attractions, and in most cases these mega-salaries are the key reason why production budgets are skyrocketing beyond the rate of inflation.
And some recent successes show you don’t need big “A-list” stars to sell a movie, and in some cases the presence of a “star” is a detriment. Look at the careers of George Clooney and Nicole Kidman. They couldn’t sell tickets to a bunker during a nuclear strike, let alone a movie.
Hollywood needs a system that goes beyond the influence of agents and publicists to determine an actor’s real value as a star.
Of course the intent of the article may be to show how overvalued the influence of CAA is on Hollywood business decisions.
I am sorry. I didn’t realize that you cannot read.
For the retarded ones:
The whole point of the article is that stars are no longer a guaranty for a film’s success. But thank you for pointing out that the names listed in the article (in a totally different context – namely that these A-list stars cannot deliver consistently) are all clients of CAA. Awesome grade F journalistic work.
“it’s increasingly clear that other elements, from established franchises to marketable concepts to such brand-name creators as Tyler Perry and Judd Apatow, either give actors a necessary boost or entirely replace them as the draw for moviegoers.”
http://failblog.wordpress.com/2008/05/01/classic-soccer-kid/
That article and numbers weren’t even correct. Specifically the numbers supplied for boxoffice figures. Example being Mr & Mrs Smith. The only numbers given were US not full international numbers. The film made 479 million worldwide. Same goes for The Assassination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford. The film has made more then 4 million. Because Warner’s f*cked up the publicity and promotion of the film it opened in only 5 theaters. As soon as I read those numbers I turned off to the rest of the article
Audiences are tired of the same old faces. Clooney is three decades older than the teenagers who flock to the cineplexes. All the A-listers are names that first arrived on the A-list at least ten to twenty years ago. That is not a situation that can sustain itself. The public is bored now. They need the rush of new love to energize them.
Mike Ovitz come backk, all is forgiven!
Most movies cater to a male audience, and a particular segment of the male audience.
Right off the bat, you lose 50%+ of the audience in most cases.
The moguls idea of catering to females is the occasional saccharin wedding movie like that embarrassment, Maid of Honor, instead of interesting empowered female characters.
The decisions are controlled by a handful of men on the studio side, and a handful at CAA. It’s an airless small power chamber that has no perspective.
Why any actor would want to be at an agency where they are packed in a competing crowded stable is perplexing.
CAA’s goal seems not to develop fresh talent, but monopolizing the biz with the same overpaid faces it controls. Studios are too gutless to bank on new faces, though the old formula has never been a guarantee.
Bottom line, it’s the eternal paradox of the biz – it demands an ever refreshing stream of talent while those making the huge money push to maintain the dying status quo.
The cycle will spin. CAA will diminish, others will rise, and the cycle repeats.
Stars are no guarantee of a film’s success. They are a guarantee that film company executive can say, “It wasn’t my fault.”
All the academic research, for example read Hollywood Economics by Arthur De Vany, has consistently shown that having a “A Star” in a movie has no influence on box office performance or profitability.
I’ve been arguing, since the beginning of the writers strike, here, on HuffPo and elsewhere, that the extreme inequity in the distribution of wealth in actors salaries is at the heart of most of the current labor troubles. You simply cannot have 50% of your budget go to 2 stars, 1 director and 2 producers, and expect everyone else, to sit idly by and watch their ability to make a living slowly go down the drain. Stars deserve to be paid, they’ve earned it, and anyone who thinks they ONLY get their price because they have the particular project over a barrel, is deeply naive. The SECOND the studios don’t have to pay Jim Carrey 20 million and a nice piece of first dollar gross, they won’t (insert ANY other applicable star name here). The simple truth is that agent-driven, actor-enabled greed is what has put the industry in the position it’s in: haves (2%?) and have nots (98%-ish?). This has become the source of all the unrest, the source of all the “radical” labor demands, which, in fact, are simply the culmination of the “working actor” or “working writer” getting screwed as a matter of course, over many years. Yes, “Iron Man” just made a bazillion dollars, but, as the president of SAG and the WGA testified before congress several months ago, the “average” writer makes 60 grand a year, the “average” actor, less. MAYBE 40. You can’t make a living! I’m talking, talented, experienced, KNOWN actors who used to get a quote, and who now:
A. Lose jobs to the same 10 actors who are on the “list.”
and
B. are faced with a “take it or leave it” mentality from the studios and networks when they DO get that rare job that they need to get them through the next 6 months or year. The suits ONLY cater to the talent they are FORCED to deal with to green light their projects.
Everybody else? “Go fuck yourself.”
THAT’S Hollywood circa 2008. CAA is the top agency, ALL they do is suck down 10% of top stars and top up and comers. “Develop a career?” Forget it. That’s for fools. Among the top three: CAA, WMA and ICM, it’s “we can get you 10, 15, 20 million” – fuck your fellow “union members” (name ONE other “union” with 2% of its members making truly obscene amounts of money, while everybody else can’t pay their bills), it’s “take the cream off the top and dump the actor at the first sign of trouble.”
Look: it’s ALL about “above the line” compensation. The studios and networks are ALL trying to squeeze profit through an increasingly tiny window on the backs of the rank and file because the above the line costs are INSANE. THAT’S why Rosenberg and Allen and the WGA before them are taking strike-ready stances: they have no choice! The people who DON’T make content in the industry are fucking the artists, the rank and file, because that’s the ONLY place they can squeeze – you can’t piss off Will Ferrel, you can’t piss off Miley Cyrus, so you screw the working stiff, as they have for years, and when the artists FINALLY stand up and say “no more,” the “industry” tries to paint THEM and thier union leaders as as greed-heads, which is a complete and utter JOKE. “Do your own thing?” Make an indie? Write something? They’ll (the powers that be) get you eventually: they own the whole deal, they make sure they get their taste, they’re like the fucking mafia, they have all the distribution pipelines wrapped up, in short, you aint goin’ NOWHERE without the blessing of the suits.
Wouldn’t a revolution be great?