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Film industry now ‘makes’ hot talent
Dwayne Johnson and Mark Vincent are two of Hollywood’s hottest commodities.
Who?
Maybe you know them by the brand names the studios are trying to sear into your consciousness — The Rock and Vin Diesel — action hunks whose paychecks have leaped millions of dollars in a single bound.
They are the leading men in the industry’s latest gambit instantly to create a new generation of action stars for movies that can spawn sequels and prequels, generating hundreds of millions of dollars around the world from ticket sales, DVDs, promotional tie-ins and TV deals. In the business, these are called ‘franchise’ movies.
With the escalating costs of producing and marketing films, the entertainment giants that control Hollywood frantically are trying to produce blockbusters with the potential to just keep on giving. Studios are engaged in a checkbook war to manufacture successors to aging action heroes that include Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis.
Said director Rob Cohen, whose surprise hit The Fast and The Furious fuel-injected Diesel’s career: “We’re not going to wait for them to be stars, we’re going to make them stars, demand that the media treat them like stars and we’ll pay them like stars and ultimately some, in fact, will become stars.”
As Warner Bros. President Alan Horn put it: “It doesn’t take five pictures to grind your way to stardom if you have a distinct persona like Vin Diesel or The Rock.”
The Rock, a 30-year-old wrestling superstar, was paid more than $5 million by Universal Pictures for his first starring role in The Scorpion King, a box-office hit that all but guarantees him $20 million for the planned sequel.
Not a bad bump for a guy who got $500,000 for his debut film, The Mummy Returns, last summer.
The Rock’s marketable name and memorable image are being exploited to lure moviegoers unaware of his routines in the ring. His name appears above the title of Scorpion King in every poster, billboard, newspaper ad and TV spot promoting the new film, a prequel to Mummy Returns.
Vin Diesel, meanwhile, has seen his salary soar tenfold. The beefy 34-year-old actor with a throaty voice and shaved head was paid $1 million for the car racing film Fast and Furious, and he wasn’t even cast as the star. But the audience — young, multiethnic and demographically desirable — went crazy over him. So did Hollywood!
In the industry’s eyes, the actor who was once a bouncer at hip New York nightclubs suddenly transcended the ensemble roles he played in the films Saving Private Ryan and Boiler Room.
The transformation was not lost on Diesel.
Immediately after the success of TFTF, he left on vacation with instructions for his agent not to bother him unless someone ponied up a whopping $10 million for his next picture.
Joe Roth, the former head of Disney Studios who now runs independently financed Revolution Studios, reluctantly stepped forward with the money for an actor he acknowledges is “totally unproven” as a star.
Still, Roth concluded that Diesel would be perfect in the upcoming summer spy thriller XXX. The tattooed Diesel plays an extreme sports rebel recruited by the government to infiltrate a Russian crime ring.
Although the movie, directed by Cohen, doesn’t open until August, Diesel has been promised $20 million for a potential sequel.
Some global franchises don’t need star power to draw crowds on their opening weekends. The phenomenal success of two movies last year were propelled by best-selling books — Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings. And, of course, George Lucas’ legendary Star Wars series is a cultural phenomenon whose good versus evil theme, colorful characters and special effects keep millions of hard-core fans coming back.
Still, plenty of movies need marquee names — whether established or newly minted.
“The pressures to break through the clutter and open a movie is greater now than ever,” says Warner Bros.’s Horn. “Therefore, star value as a component of the decision-making process has greater weight than ever.”
Although lesser known in Hollywood than The Rock or Vin Diesel, other names have become beneficiaries, too.
Rap artist DMX, whose real name is Earl Simmons, got a multimillion-dollar, three-picture deal from Warner Bros, after he helped make the studio’s action movie, Exit Wounds, the top-grossing film on its opening weekend in March last year.
“The newcomers are emerging with a more accelerated pace than we were accustomed to in the past,” said Universal Pictures Vice Chairman Marc Shmuger. “Not only do we view them as brands, they view themselves that way and they understand what that means.”
But sometimes the market goes south.
Following the surprise success of her 1995 teen comedy Clueless, 18-year-old Alicia Silverstone landed a $10 million deal to star in and produce two movies for Columbia Pictures. Instantly, she became one of Hollywood’s highest paid actresses.
Only one movie was made, Excess Baggage, and that died at the box office. She got $5 million. The studio got left holding the bag. Today, Silverstone is resurrecting her career on Broadway, playing Mrs. Robinson’s daughter, Elaine, in The Graduate.
Hollywood executives who have been around long enough know that the high expectations surrounding hot new talent — so-called heat — sometimes can be a mirage.
“Heat is a tricky thing,” said 20th Century Fox co-chairman Tom Rothman. “Sometimes it can keep you warm, sometimes you can get burned.” —Dawn/Los Angeles Times
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