I saw an interesting question asked on Twitter: What was the last American movie that was a hit purely (or mostly purely) because people wanted to see the person who was starring in it. Not an IP or effects laden extravaganza but a low key premise but has a star that sold tickets. The one they came up with was Seven Pounds. Another, older example of the kind of movie they mean would be Cocktail. Can anyone come up with a more recent example than Seven Pounds?
I went back and looked at 2018 and 2019 (the last two pre-pandemic years). Maybe The Greatest Showman, from 2018? No big FX, it wasn’t a comic-book or sci-fi film, and it had relatively unknown screenwriters and director - mostly, it had Hugh Jackman.
It grossed $125 million in the U.S.
Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour?
(OK, obviously not a low-key premise…)
Not the example the OP is looking for, but Star Wars Episode VII which reunited Hamill, Ford and Fisher grossed over $2 billion. When Episode VIII rolled around, minus Ford, it grossed $1.3 billion. And Episode IX, where everyone knew that Carrie Fisher’s appearance was pieced together from earlier movies, grossed only $1.07 billion. Even with Mark Hamill, that’s still a tremendous drop.
You would think a franchise like Star Wars wouldn’t need a big star to drive box office, but when the star was Harrison Ford, I guess it did.
I hate to say it, but the problem might be that those Star Wars movies weren’t very good not that Ford wasn’t in all of them.
This, and there was also a fair amount of toxic fandom going on, particularly pouting over how the main character was a woman.
Maybe I’m missing the point here. But Bad Boys: Ride or Die is currently selling a lot of tickets and I think it’s pretty certain that it wouldn’t have done so if Will Smith and Martin Lawrence hadn’t signed on again. I don’t think anybody was showing up for the next episode in the story.
Or IF, which is heavily marketing Ryan Reynolds as its lead.
Or are these examples of “an IP or effects laden extravaganza”?
I’m guessing they probably would fall into those categories. I was going to suggest a recent movie by Tom Cruise but his recent efforts also are IP and/or effects-laden extravaganzas.
I honestly don’t know whether those fit the OP’s criteria or not.
I got the impression that the OP was thinking of the kind of thing where people would say “Let’s go see the latest Arnold Schwarzenegger movie” or “Let’s go see the latest Adam Sandler movie” without really knowing or caring anything else about the movie besides who was starring in it.
But if so, I don’t know how much examples like those are due to the actor’s star power, and how much it is that those actors tend to make a particular type of movie, and so they attract audiences who like that type of movie.
Anyone But You seemed to be built around saying, hey, would you like to see how things go for these two people? It’s not two other people; it’s these two people! She’s really good-looking! He’s really good-looking! She’s giving him a look! He’s giving her a look!
Does Ticket to Paradise (2022) count? It stars Julia Roberts and George Clooney and is a rom-com that got mixed reviews but ended it up making money anyway. Not a lot, but more than it cost to make it. I would guess most of the viewers went because of who it starred and less because it might have any plot worth talking about.
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Anyone But You cost less and grossed more money, with even mixed-er reviews, more recently.
What about Challengers? Luca Guadagnino has some star power from people who liked Call Me By Your Name but I wager a substantial number of people went because it was the “Zendaya threesome movie”.
True, but I don’t know if Powell and Sweeny are popular enough yet to get people to watch a movie simply based on that. They are rising stars, but not yet ones that people think of as being the main draw.
One thing that can be used as an admittedly non-scientific way to determine what might be the draw is the relative font size of the actors name, vs the title of the movie (as well as their location) on posters. Ticket to Paradise puts the actors names at the top in big font while Anyone But You has the actors names in smaller font with the title more prominent.
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You have to eliminate sequels, because the majority are going for ‘more of the same’ or ‘a continuation of the story’ and not because of the stars in them. You also have to eliminate movies that weren’t hits. And eliminate movies nobody has heard of starring actors nobody has heard of because what the fuck.
Anyway, the problem with the OP is it’s a statistic that’s so hard to objectively measure.
That’s a good example, I think.
Nowadays a lot of smaller movies are done for streaming platforms, so that eliminates a lot of good examples. For instance, Adam Sandler does many movies that rely more-or-less solely on Adam Sandler (e.g. Uncut Gems, Murder Mystery, Hubie Halloween, Hustle), but they’re all on Netflix.
FWIW I didn’t originate the question but I suspect If wouldn’t fit what they were looking for (not sure it mattered that Ryan Reynolds was in that) and Bad Boys is an IP at this point but I think is close (but I think they mean more dramas or low key comedies versus action vehicles). Challengers, however, I think is a good answer. A ton of tickets got sold because Zendaya was in it and really that was the only reason why.
But that brought in less than $100m, and on a budget of more than $50m. Compare that to, say, the latest Jason Statham action flick, from earlier this year: more than $150m, on a budget of less than $50m, and the pitch is “You know Jason Statham, right?”
Yeah Beekeeper may also be a good answer.
Uncut Gems wasn’t a streaming film.