‘Neither producers or audience need stars anymore’ How far do you agree with this statement?

‘Neither producers or audience need stars anymore’

How far do you agree with this statement?

I both agree and disagree with this statement, as I believe there are many arguments that can both support and oppose it. The reason I think the statement was made is because in modern cinema stars have become a lot less relevant than they once were due to the rise of franchises. Since the late 90’s audiences have become more driven to go and see films based on their story and the characters in it rather than who is playing them. This is because most of the most successful franchises have a pre existing fan base from books or games. For example in the Harry Potter franchise three 12 year olds - that had before the release of ‘The Philosophers Stone’ had been completely unknown – were cast to play in the staring roles. However this had no impact on the box office sales as this film is the number one film of 2001 on the box office, beating LOTR: The Fellowship of the Ring by $5 million, which stared names like Sir Ian McKellan, Christopher Lee and Cate Blanchett. In fact 9/10 of the films from that year are within a franchise. This is a trend that has continued almost ever year since.

Although franchises don’t necessarily need stars to make them a hit in the box office, they do however sometimes rely on stars to help establish the franchise if it was not a pre-established story. An example of this can be found in the 2014 film Maleficent whereby Angelina Jolie was cast as the lead, enabling the franchise to attract her fans as well as Disney fans and thus establishing the franchise. Franchise films now also need to appeal to the global audience  Independent films do however use star power to draw in audiences. This year has already seen this twice with Leonardo DiCaprio’s ‘The Revenant’ and The Danish Girl staring Oscar Winning Eddie Redmayne.

As television grows in power as being a source for entertainment, with programs like Game of  Thrones and Sherlock taking 

Producers could also argue that the decline in star power has reflected the growth in the film industry, and now there is a much greater pool of talent to cast characters from. For example the in 'The Force Awakens' Daisy Ridley was cast in a leading role and she has never before been in such a large production. The reason this was able to happen is because fans of such a large franchise don't care about the stars playing the characters, they care solely for the character itself. this can be good for producers in other ways too as lesser known actors don't cost as much to cast as those with a more established fan base. You can see this in The Force Awakens as Ridley was paid just $100,000, whereas Harrison Ford was paid more than ten times this gaining almost $15 million from his reprised role as Han Solo. 

Ford,  and other big stars have growing fan bases that are ever in need of more information about their personal life. this has caused stars to become much more easy to access and has brought them back down to earth and so they have become less special. It is now common for celebrities to correspond regularly with fans and for them to speak about their everyday life. This has made stars become less special and appear unimportant as we find out they go through the same mundane things that we go through. This can destroy the ideologies that used to be around stars whereby they were thought to be perfect. A stars personal life can now make them become typecast as the qualities they portray in their personal life become that we associate with the characters they play. Looking at someone like Emma Watson, who in her personal life is a UN Goodwill Ambassador, we know that she is a strong and intelligent woman and these are qualities that she portrays in the characters she plays in he films.