How the Prioritisation and Prerequisites of A List Actors are a Recession Indicator
Words: JoliAmour DuBose-Morris
Back in the olden days of Hollywood, A List actors were the speckle of gold that sparkled throughout its cutthroat industry. Fans followed limousines down the busy streets of downtown Los Angeles, or fainted at sight of them on a red carpet in New York. Hollywood was built on audiences waiting in line at the Regal Cinema to check out a film they knew nothing about because it was Tom Cruise in Top Gun (1986). Or, it starred Al Pacino and Keanu Reeves in The Devil’s Advocate (1995). Now, these actors may be a sign of decline.
A List actors have always been the most efficient marketing opportunity to ensure any project breaks the internet or the box office; everyone knows that. Avengers: Endgame (2019) by itself sits at number two of the ‘Top Lifetime Grosses’ with an accumulated $2,799,439,100 to its name, according to Box Office Mojo, probably just for that one scene where characters blip back onto the battle ground to fight Thanos. It was a stand out of action-movie glory.
Some of our favorite directors, like the modern big three - Wes Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, and Christopher Nolan - are known for creating magic with a rotating cast of actors. For Anderson, that includes Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, and Scarlett Johansson. For Tarantino, it’s Brad Pitt, Samuel L. Jackson, and Christopher Waltz. And Nolan has definitely a couple of different muses: Cillian Murphy, Christian Bale, and Robert Pattinson. With star-studded casts like these, it is no wonder that their films are not only box office successes but critically acclaimed by audience standards. Nolan’s upcoming film, The Odyssey (releasing in 2026), continues to trend on social media daily for every new actor added: Tom Holland, Zendaya, Matt Damon, Lupita Nyong’o, Anne Hathaway, Charlize Theron, Robert Pattinson, and Ben Safdie.
A buffet lineup like this is sure to make IMAX seating exceptionally difficult to score, because all of us know it’s going to be good. A film like this has to be. And hasn’t that knowledge become so deflating?
“Art isn’t supposed to be predictably successful. Art is just supposed to happen.”
It’s starting to feel like every awards season or film year is just a duplicate of the one previous; where the projects are different, sure, and the roles are led by some experienced and certainly spectacular individuals, but the spirit is gone. Who’s to root for when you know these actors are being favoured rather than picked from a gruelling audition process? Robert Downey Jr. is set to receive $100 million for Doctor Doom, his re-entrance into the MCU after retiring from the franchise for approximately two seconds - he doesn’t represent the underdogs being picked apart in casting rooms for roles already selected, or the ones submitting audition tapes to Backstage for a 1/8th chance of a follow-up. Who can we relate to if these are the same actors who recorded themselves singing John Lennon’s Imagine as an act of karaoke solidarity during a global pandemic?
Hollywood’s oldest casting trick in the book might crumble under our nausea with the elite - a natural follow up to the nepo baby scandals that shook our social media consciousness only just over two years ago. Currently, we’re in another intense height of global economic and political collapse. And A List actors are starting to represent the indicators of this finite recession. From the aforementioned nepo babies, to reboots and prequels for box office films we didn’t ask for, to the shows we loved that streaming platforms pulled the plug on for “viewership issues” — which should really be identified as “promotional issues” — audiences are feeling fatigued by the lack of effort. And we’re being told that the higher-ups may not care.
This week, Kharmel Cochrane, the casting director for Emerald Fennell's new film, Wuthering Heights, an adapted feature from the renowned Emily Brontë novel, spoke out against the current controversy over its leading call sheet. The casting choices made flames when social media received knowledge that Margot Robbie would play Catherine, and Healthcliff, who in the book, was described to be racially ambiguous with darker skin — two things a white Australian actor is not, was a role given to Jacob Elordi. In defense of these decisions, Cochrane told Deadline: “There was one Instagram comment that said the casting director should be shot… But just wait till you see it, and then you can decide whether you want to shoot me or not. But you really don’t need to be accurate. It’s just a book. That is not based on real life. It’s all art.”
When Cochrane says, “it’s just a book” to defend her disinterest to cast accurately, it shows negligence to the art that they’re recreating — a lack of overall comprehension that they are, in fact, recreating. Was it just a book when Fennell was inspired by it? It is now because they have casting preferences to aestheticise? Are the power dynamics and morals Brontë was trying to bring forth with Healthcliff’s character not worthy of mention, why are these the artistic choices that can be replaced? Which means not only is literature replaceable, but the humans that inspired it - because Healthcliff is based on real life,
“Because he is a representation of the people of colour that exist - who live, are also replaceable.”
Recently, Stranger Things actress, Maya Hawke was on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, and spoke to the new requirement for casting directors: Followers. Hawke said, “I’m talking about deleting my Instagram and [some directors are] like, ‘Just so you know when I’m casting a movie with some producers, they hand me a sheet with the amount of collective followers I have to get from the cast.’” But what about Hawke’s experience? Does Asteroid City, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and Maestro mean nothing? What does it say that Hawke, who’s recognised her career privileges as the daughter of Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke, can also be seen at the bottom of the casting food chain by producer’s new requisite of minimum followers to assure boosting sales.
When did one of the most creative industries become so avoidant of spontaneity? Creativity? Great failures? When did our art become so green of income and not of emotion or feeling? Hollywood gave up its soul to the box office a long time ago, and it won’t regain it back through the Billionaire Boys Club known as A List Actors.
