I believe concept is key. And a good story is always king, but you still need Stars. If you want your movie to make money for the most part you need stars. There are always the exceptions, but the problem is people like to make the exceptions the rule. People knew Leonardo Dicaprio was in the Inception movie. Dicaprio is a superstar. If Joseph Gordon Levitt was in the title role or Tom Hardy was the main character in Inception it would have made money but it wouldn't be close to 500 million worldwide in four weeks.

The Dark Knight is one my favorite movies, but if anyone thinks that The Dark Knights box office didn't double because Heath Ledger died tragically and people wanted to see his last MAJOR role which he performed brilliantly in people are kidding themselves. If you have a great concept and you marry that with a superstar/talented actor then it's always a win win situation. Imagine if Will Smith or Tom Cruise starred in The first Matrix as they were offered the roles before Keanu Reeves. The movies box office would have doubled.

Tom Cruise for all the talk about losing star power. Knight and Day is at 200 million worldwide. Star Power is very important to Foriegn Box office which is the majority of the box office now a days.

@Jason

2 things.

1) The dark knight is not a concept but a known product. But I do agree heath had an effect.

2)Knight and day also feed on the subliminal concept "What if we met mr. and mrs. smith when they first met". And with tom cruises fading star power I don't believe he factored in that much. Also see Cameron diaz being in a big role since charlies angels.


@scott

I've actually been thinking about this for awhile and I see in the tea leaves that screenwriters, long being the underrated and unappreciated, being the new stars of hollywood. And an even bigger plus for writer directors. The game has changed baby. For all the crap we spew about hating sequals, and adaptaions, and board games made to film I'm rolling on the ground grabbing my belly. People are sitting back and saying this is so crap more often than not in the theatres. And we also put more faith in directors, especially writer directors to wow us. See: Shamalama ding dongs name being groaned at screenings of devil trailer, also chris nolan being the biggest marketed name for inception. The tides are turning, so start writing pages and turning on cameras, it's time to coincide our writing minds with our cinematical and do double duty to take advantage of this time.

I personally find the samples of "talent" notable here. Since, well, yes, their names alone could at one time advance a picture being made, but with the exception of Roberts, never found Diaz, Cruise or Cage to be mediocre actors at best. I find it further entertaining that DiCaprio and Inception is noted, as I feel he's fallen quite a bit and was by far not the best talent in that film.

Now, in contrast to what Jason said, I don't doubt that his passing had something to do with sales, but I believe that reports of his fantastic performance did a greater good.

The sad truth is, James Cameron (if you might think of Directors as star power), will still make ton on his next picture, even if it's worse than Avatar. Case in point, we can "star power" this all we want, but Worthington holds about three pounds more weight in the US than Tom Hardy. If you think about that and the known supporting cast of Avatar, you could establish a point for Inception had someone else taken lead and DiCaprio was, say, not in it at all.

Back to being serious, story will always be key. Sure, the hundreds of millions to grab our attention away from story and place it on 3D digital worlds may have won out now, but it will become trite long before a good story will.

I absolutely agree on the "story is key" thing. However, I do think that casting directors, studios, and agents are slightly to blame in the downgrading of Movie Star's status as well.

Just like with original stories and concepts, they're not looking for actors with unique presense, originality, wit, and genuine talent anymore. They're also trying to "declare" movie stars before they really are ones (i.e. Collin Farrell comes to mind and I bet Taylor Lautner's heading down the same path). Actors who stood out in ensambles, and were "attractive", but couldn't open an actual movie. It'll be interesting to see how those TL vehicles actually do, cause the dude's not a very good actor. True movie stars have to earn their status via the audience, not Hollywood saying, "hey, they're a star cuz we say so."

So, in short i think the epidemic has more to do with Hollywood's general lack of interest in true talent ALL ACROSS the board, rather than simply just the story.

I'm just saying the general public still responds to stars. A lot of actors who should be box office superstars are not because they are not taking those kind of huge hero type roles. Brad Pitt has done two summer Popcorn movies in his career where he was the lead(Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Troy) both made almost 500 million worldwide. I'm not counting the Oceans movies because there are really George Clooney vehicles.

Speaking of George Clooney he's another one. He only does small independent films really. He has the Oceans movies, Batman and Robin, and that movie with Nicole Kidman that was kind of a lame action type thing.

Also there is Dicaprio. Inception is his first big summer Action Thriller movie. His only other big summer/holiday event movie was Titanic. Brad Pitt and Leonardo Dicaprio could easily do Will Smith type numbers or old school Tom Cruise box office numbers if they took those summer Action adventure event movie roles.

The prime example of this is Johhny Depp. What happenend when he decided to star in a big budget summer Action adventure movie after a career of small independent movies even though he had the looks, charisma, and popularity with the general public to be your typical A list leading man. What happened was that he helped a movie in a dead genre(pirates) become a billion dollar franchise.

You can argue the first Pirates movie was good, but the other two were a mess but people still went to see Johhny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow in those horrible sequels.

This phenomena is a result of the financial situation in the industry. They announced that they could no longer afford to pay star wages over three years ago. The Writer's Strike and the Screen Actor's Strike were both fights that were picked because funding is tight, and new media is decimating old profit models. Its a buyer's market so on screen talent has been taking a bath on their command of salary. A natural effect of lack of exposure is the reduction of star power. So if the industry is saying movie stars can't carry movies anymore- then eventually we'll believe them, until the pendulum swings again. Original concepts aren't winning, pre-built audiences are winning. So we have movies like Twilight, and Iron Man 2 that are built on fans from different formats of storytelling. Adaptations and sequels are what are being made.

It is an interesting debate. I am not sure where I come down, but consider these comments on the value of ideas/concepts by Richard Walter, UCLA Screenwriting Chair:

http://thelastreveal.blogspot.com/2010/08/interview-with-ucla-screenwriting-chair.html

"I've argued repeatedly that ideas and concepts are useless. Lame ideas make great movies. Look at Star Wars. Citizen Kane. The idea is the single most overrated component in the equation. When you have a really great idea for a movie, that's all you have. What remains? Everything! Incident, anecdote, action, setting, character, dialogue. Great movies are not about ideas but stories."

http://ourmaninlosangeles.blogspot.com/2010/08/essentials-of-screenwriting-q-with.html

"Regarding high concepts: the one common trait shared by all high level executives is a feeble attention span. High concepts are crafted so that even the lame-brained numb-nuts head of a studio can understand it. If you look at the great movies, the ideas they appear to be based upon, their underlying concepts, are fairly lame. Citizen Kane is about a guy who has wealth and women and power but is unhappy. Does that sound like a great movie? Star Wars is a fairy tale in space where the bad guys capture the princess and the good guys rescue her. Who would want to see that? Writers should stop trying to find good ideas and instead let good ideas find them."

There have been great concepts behind great movies, and there have been lousy or mediocre ideas behind great movies. It suggests that there are other factors tipping the balance, and that may indeed be stars, direction, and execution.

I think the problem is that writers don't seem to know how to tailor roles for stars while still maintaining a strong concept.

My life in LA has stabilized so I'll be pitching soon. I have films for most major stars but not the type where there's just a bunch of close-ups. I have to have real emotion and that's something that is really missing in cinema.

EXCEPT FOR PIXAR.

Admittedly I don't feel that it needs to take 4 years to write a movie but it does produce some powerful stuff.