Well the big Hollywood star system anyway. Tim Andrews recently wrote on the slow decline of the established American media, it looks like the Hollywood star system is also falling apart:
The year 2009 has been a financial disaster for nearly every industry save one: the motion-picture business. Hollywood's box office receipts are up nearly 20 percent from 2008. The eight most successful movies over the course of the year's first eight months have collectively grossed $2.7 billion, up from $2.3 billion for the entirety of 2008. And what is most striking about these eight films is that not a single one of them, not a single one, features an unmistakable star.
Three of them are cartoons (Up, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, and Monsters vs. Aliens). Three are sequels whose top-line talents are incidental to their success (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, the sixth Harry Potter, and X-Men Origins: Wolverine). Two feature relative nobodies (Star Trek and The Hangover). The first traditional star appears in the ninth-place film, which is itself a high-concept sequel in which the star mostly stands around (Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian with Ben Stiller). It's not until tenth place that a classic vehicle hits the list, Sandra Bullock's The Proposal. And after that you have to jump down to 15th place to find Tom Hanks in Angels and Demons.
Ohh, the horror! Imagine movie stars having to take pay cuts or reduced to doing voice overs. Nobody will give a stuff about their veiws on politics (I'm not sure anyone does now ) . Gossip magazines will have to find someone else to write about.... hmm...... I can't see it happening either. I somehow think we are stuck with these "stars" for sometime yet.
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