Hollywood Is Re-Thinking A-List Actors, But Are They Right?

Hollywood studios are reportedly rethinking whether or not they should continue spending large sums of cash on A-list celebrities and lavish productions.  This comes in the wake of not only our dismal economy but also - and perhaps more importantly - because of the recent success of low-budget films with relatively unknown casts such as District 9 and The Hangover.

This, in my opinion, is one of those moments where Hollywood can either get things horribly, horribly wrong or wonderfully right.

I believe that the crucial reason why those low-budget films did extremely well at the box office is that they had a really good story behind them.  I feel that movie audiences are, quite frankly, getting tired of lame, formula driven movies.  Many movie fans can't go to the cinema as often as they would like in the current economy so when they do go, they're looking for the most out of their $8.  Simply dropping one celebrity or another into a mediocre script and piecing things together with some computer generated special effects doesn't cut it anymore.

Films that offer a top-notch story and are well-executed will offer their studio some impressive results at the box office, I predict.  However, if a given studio were to cut away their celebrities simply for the sake of cutting and don't offer a celebrity to draw in at least some movie goers then they'll likely see an even bigger disaster when the only person who buys a ticket to the resulting movie is the mothers of those unknown cast members.

In the current economy, a good writer is especially important; perhaps now more than ever.