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Week Of April 9, 2007 - Mon / Wed / Fri
April 13, 2007
The Third Annual THB Survey
WHO ARE THE BIGGEST STARS
IN THE WORLD?
THE TOP 10
10. Tom Hanks (14) – DaVinci was huge worldwide. Stardom reaffirmed. Charlie Wilson’s War in the Oscar slot. But it is The Great Buck Howard that is the real test.
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9. Vince Vaughn (8) – The Break Up was a big win following Wedding Crashers, but we’re going to have to wait for Fred Claus for his next hit and his greatest success seems the most project dependent of the Big Five.
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8. Johnny Depp (6) – Of the Top Ten, he is the one who most needs the Potential vs Reality scoring. Because he could be one of the two or three biggest stars in the world. That guy in the Pirates movies is. But the guy whose next two films will be Sweeney Todd and Shantaram is not. I expect Pirates 3 to be the biggest cash draw of Summer 2007 and that the guy will have an Oscar by this time next year, but it will be a while before he sees $100m domestic again… maybe 2 or 3 years.
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7. Jim Carrey (5) – The fourth of the Big Five these days, he is a cash machine waiting to be tapped. But unless it’s a drama, he won’t make a movie that doesn’t cost a frickin’ arm and a leg to make. His last massive hit, his biggest, Bruce Almighty, is four years ago. And he needs another one of those in a hurry. Simple, budget-friendly, good conceit, all on Jim. In many ways, he needs a Night At The Museum with less CG (thus a smaller budget) and more about the character. Yet… he’s always just a movie away from shooting back to the top.
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6. Ben Stiller (17) – You can’t discount his power… but it is hard to give him all that much credit for Night At The Museum. Sorry. But would Steve Carrell in that role have done a dollar less? (And Universal has to keep that in mind with Evan Almighty… it’s the concept, not the star.) Okay… maybe a dollar less. Maybe $50 million less. But still, it turned out to be a $200 million marketing concept and did anyone really go to the movie to see Stiller? Similarly, he is a key to the Fockers franchise, but how critical is it that he was the foil there? I don’t want to disrespect an amazing career. But building from ground up, he’s not quite Ferrell or Sandler or Carrey, were Carrey not in a similar position of making oversized films now.
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5. Will Ferrell (4) – Talladega Nights and Blades of Glory remind us how strong he can be. But as with Sandler, the international box office still doesn’t get the joke. Still, of the Big Five Comedy Guys, he is the closest to Sandler, driven by his own persona, still able to make a movie on a budget.
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4. Adam Sandler (5) – Until any of the other members of comedy’s Big Five can show that they can stand alone and deliver time after time on modest budgets or break through internationally, he is still the King of Comedy. Jim Carrey simply hasn’t made a cheap movie that delivered big since Liar Liar, a decade ago. Stiller is huge inside the right machine, but it’s unclear whether he is a more important producer or actor. And Vaughn hasn’t quite proven that he can go out and knock them dead on his own. Sandler is $125m to $230m in the bank, every time, except for Little Nicky or non-comedies, for the last decade. Last summer’s Click was his biggest worldwide gross ever, though Sandler is generally just a domestic player… but what a player.
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3. Tom Cruise (2) – For all the Redstone whining about M:I3, the film was a Top 100 grosser worldwide to the tune of just under $400 million, doing 2/3 of its business overseas. We in the media have convinced ourselves that Cruise is in trouble. But it requires more than a little self-aggrandizing Kool-Aid. Yes, he has hit 40 and that is the danger age for good-looking male leads. But find another actor other than him that had worldwide grosses of $546m, $358m, $4456m, $592m, and $398m in the first six years of this millennium and had “off” titles (Vanilla Sky and Collateral) that still did $23 million and $218 million. His big films have become very expensive and he gets so much of the gross that Sumner gave up on him. He still hasn’t had a film he starred in that grossed less than $100 million worldwide and hasn’t been under $200 million worldwide since 1999. There’ll have to be a lot more dirt before this one is completely buried.
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2. Brad Pitt (3) – His power overseas is what makes him so highly ranked. Babel did more than twice overseas what it did domestically. Then there is Troy, Mr & Mrs Smith, and the Ocean’s movies. The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, in which a lot of the aging will be done by CG and not make-up, is a real key for his position. He needs this to be David Fincher’s biggest movie since Se7en to keep allowing him the freedom to dance in the arty stuff in between commercial hits. But right now, he has to be #2.
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1. Will Smith (1) – He is where Hanks used to be… he can make huge international hits out of big movies and he can make significant international hits out of dramas. He gave up campaigning for the win after getting his second Oscar nomination for Best Actor to finish shooting his next big action film, I Am Legend, due in December, which will be followed by Smith as a superhero married to Charlize Theron in Tonight He Comes, due next July 4 weekend. Given what his top shelf competition is up to, he might be a prohibitive pick as #1 by this time next year… a near lock to be here for a third year in a row because of how smartly he manages his career.
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