<\/p>\n
Hollywood has been fretting over the death of the movie star for nearly a decade now, and the fear is not unfounded: The golden era when the likes of Tom Cruise, Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt, and Denzel Washington could coax audiences to the cinema with sheer name recognition seems to be passing into memory without enough proper successors to take their places. For a while, franchise sequels, which produced a whole new group of leading men and women, appeared set to replace the classic star vehicle. Many of these works, however, are built around familiar characters, not the people portraying them; actors such as \u201cthe Chrises\u201d (Hemsworth, Evans, Pine, and Pratt) have at times struggled to maintain their commercial success outside of the popular intellectual property that launched them.<\/p>\n
Now the industry is in a bit of a strange no-man\u2019s-land. Once-reliable bets, such as established brands and genres, are floundering somewhat, and stars seem to matter less and less. But this moment feels artistically exciting, if financially risky: During Presidents\u2019 Day weekend, none of the top five films at the box office was a sequel, and only one, Wuthering Heights<\/i><\/a>, was based on an existing property. Odd phenomena such as Iron Lung<\/i><\/a>, a horror movie self-funded by a popular YouTuber that has grossed nearly $50 million worldwide, also suggest that there are innovative ways to appeal to theatergoers. Another emerging trend skews more classic Hollywood\u2014directors, particularly those who might be considered auteurs for their well-defined aesthetic and storytelling style, have begun to matter just as much as the actors attached to them. Yes, 2026 will bring a new Avengers<\/i> installment, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie<\/i>, and a Michael Jackson biopic. What\u2019s atop the Rotten Tomatoes list of the year\u2019s most anticipated releases, though? A note that Steven Spielberg and Christopher Nolan have new movies on the way.<\/p>\n For decades, if there was one filmmaker most viewers could identify, it was Spielberg. In the 1970s and \u201980s, the director of smash hits including E.T. <\/i>and Jaws<\/i> established himself as such a force that his mere participation as an executive producer (on movies as varied as Gremlins <\/i>and An American Tail<\/i>) functioned as an automatic guarantee of quality. A few other blockbuster figures came close to ascending to that status in the years that followed, including James Cameron and Peter Jackson; certain indie breakouts, such as Quentin Tarantino and Spike Lee, became minor celebrities through sheer force of personality. But lately, as Hollywood has struggled to sell its films on the backs of big stars, hard-core cinephiles\u2014the type of moviegoer who buys tickets months in advance and logs everything they\u2019ve seen on Letterboxd\u2014have begun emphasizing the role of the director in deciding what to watch. Studios now seem to be picking up on this interest: The prerelease discussion<\/a> of Nolan\u2019s version of The Odyssey<\/i>, for instance, <\/i>primarily frames the movie as his grandest effort yet, despite the presence of A-listers such as Matt Damon, Zendaya, and Tom Holland.<\/p>\n Spielberg\u2019s name, after all these years, still holds cachet\u2014it is the only one above the title on the teaser poster<\/a> for the sci-fi drama Disclosure Day<\/i>, <\/i>out this summer. Yet even lesser-known filmmakers have become a selling point: The latest reboot of The<\/i> Mummy<\/i> is titled Lee Cronin\u2019s<\/i> The Mummy<\/i>, making the young writer-director sound like the next cause c\u00e9l\u00e8bre in that genre (regardless of whether critics agree or not). And Wuthering Heights<\/i>, which topped the box office in its opening weekend, was prominently touted as the latest work from the director Emerald Fennell, despite the fact that her two prior films had made only about $20 million apiece worldwide. Fennell\u2019s penchant for love-it-or-hate-it<\/a> erotic melodrama has distinguished her work among moviegoers; the resulting cultural fascination has helped her adaptation of Emily Bront\u00eb\u2019s novel pull in $150 million globally thus far.<\/p>\n Why studios are clinging to this kind of branding is easy to see. The two most Oscar-nominated films this year are Sinners<\/a> <\/i>and One Battle After Another<\/i><\/a>, R-rated dramas from the directors Ryan Coogler and Paul Thomas Anderson. Neither movie, on the surface, sounds like an obvious success: Sinners<\/i> is a music-filled vampire story set in 1932 Mississippi; One Battle After Another <\/i>is a nearly three-hour-long, generation-spanning, political action-dramedy. Yet they won over not only critics but also wide audiences. Among the year\u2019s other big-budget productions, the films stood out to cinemagoers as idiosyncratic and stylish, with resonant themes of family and community. They captured each director at a professional turning point as well: Anderson has received Academy Award nominations, including for Best Picture, for his previous work, yet he had rarely broken through to a mainstream audience\u2014let alone made something at this scale. Sinners<\/i>, meanwhile, <\/i>was Coogler\u2019s leap out of the world of franchises (he made Creed<\/i><\/a> <\/i>and the two Black Panther<\/i><\/a> <\/i>installments). The movies\u2019 highly personal nature meant that Coogler and Anderson were as prominently discussed as their superstar leads, Michael B. Jordan and Leonardo DiCaprio.<\/p>\n