This can't be right

According to this item, the Hollywood studios are starting to rebel against high salaries for movie stars because they're out of proportion to reality.

Studio executives are increasingly frustrated by hit films that leave them impoverished because the stars, as well as directors such as Steven Spielberg, grab most of the profits.

Most recently, Paramount Pictures has allowed a long-standing deal with Tom Cruise whereby-

Paramount has paid Cruise-Wagner Productions, Cruise's private film development company, up to $17.5 million a year to base its office on the Paramount lot in Los Angeles. It also paid for 10 staff. In return, Paramount gets the first bite at any Cruise film.

-to lapse.

The item further goes on to say that

Studios are feeling more bullish because many northern summer hits, from Cars to Superman Returns, have been driven by strong scripts and computer effects rather than celebrities.

Emphasis mine. Well, I'd like to believe that, I really would...but I think we all know that even as we speak Will Ferrel is being offered something like 13 million (I'm guessing) a picture.

And actually, I don't mind that so much. His picture is bringing in a lot of money and it's fair to say he's responsible for a good amount of that and that Americans like him. Whereas Tom Cruise:

Hollywood studios are influenced by Q Scores, an annual poll of a celebrity's likeability. In the last poll, the percentage of Americans who liked Cruise fell from 30 two years ago to 19, while people who disliked him jumped from 14 to 31. The next Q Score, due to be released confidentially to the studios next month, is expected to be even worse.

Henry Schaffer, of Marketing Evaluations, which carries out the Q Score polls, said Cruise had suffered in particular with young women, especially compared with more low-profile stars such as Tom Hanks. "The two Toms used to be neck and neck at the top of the Hollywood tree, but the more flamboyant Tom is in danger of crash and burn," he said.

The more "flamboyant" Tom. Cough cough. Anyway, the problem from my point of view isn't just that actors (and some directors) are paid such a huge percentage of the costs for any film-it's the other valuable contributors to a film that aren't.

And the fact that these big paydays contribute to cart-before-the-horse filmmaking where something gets made not because somebody (a writer, perhaps), has a good idea for a story or some characters but because somebody sees a market.

I suppose, in a utopian, almost Communist world, everybody who worked on a film would be paid almost the same up till and unless it began to show a profit. Which brings us to the well-nigh legendary feats of Hollywood accounting, which are well known for contriving to show that virtually nothing shows a profit.

Which is another reason why so many actors, once they are in the position of one of the Toms, insist on getting so much beforehand. It's a screwed-up system (he's just getting this now?). And much as I would like to believe this item, that wants me to believe studios are realizing strong scripts are at least as important as movie stars and SFX...

I just don't think there's a lot of talk of that going on in the deal-making for Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Jamie Fox, Colin Farrell or Michael Mann at the moment...