Who is popular today?

Brad Pitt’s new film is fizzling out. Meryl Streep is doing TV. Only Tom Cruise fills cinemas – and, in the age of superheroes and streaming, his days may be numbered. So, what does the future hold for Hollywood’s big beasts?These are dark days for movie stars. The new Brad Pitt action-comedy Bullet Train took $30.1m (£24.6m) on its opening weekend in the US – a solid enough figure to top the domestic box office chart, but unspectacular given the film’s $90m budget and Pitt’s star power. One of the few actors who can still “open” a film, Pitt represents an increasingly endangered breed: the movie star who refuses to do TV.Another TV holdout, Tom Cruise, continued his hot streak with Top Gun: Maverick, which recently surpassed Titanic at the US box office, although the film’s very success is being heralded as the end of an era, with Cruise lionised variously as “the last movie star” and “the last movie star standing in a changing Hollywood”. Meanwhile, obituaries declare the “death of the movie star” and “RIP to the movie star”. Continue reading...