Being a big Hollywood star means getting luxury cars as gifts, visiting exotic locales on the studios' dime and cashing checks with lots of zeros.
But the traditional -- and often extreme -- deference shown A-listers is changing along with the economics of Hollywood, as demonstrated by Tuesday's public eviction of Tom Cruise from Paramount Pictures' back lot.
The Internet is growing fast as an entertainment channel, and the cost of producing blockbusters is rising almost as quickly. That emboldens studio chiefs working for publicly traded companies to challenge the fickle power of the most popular stars.
To be sure, celebrity still matters, blockbusters still fill theater seats and movie stars still live like, well, movie stars. But the same shifts in technology and audience tastes that changed the music industry are starting to influence the movie business.
At the same time, media companies afraid of missing the next big thing are making big-budget bets on no-name Internet stars who draw millions of viewers.
"Celebrity is less powerful now," said Jeff Fenster, an executive at Jive Records who helped discover pop superstars Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys. "Just because a film or album stars a big-name celebrity doesn't guarantee success anymore. And Hollywood craves making money above everything else."
Even Sumner Redstone, chairman of Paramount owner Viacom Inc., suggested in an interview Wednesday that parting with Cruise after a 14-year business relationship had more to do with the profitability of his recent films than with his off-screen antics.
"There is no question that the box office is affected by other distractions such as the Internet and video games," Redstone said. "Studios make peanuts compared to the stars, and unless they learn how to say no and demand more for less, they won't survive."
Cruise, for instance, may end up making as much as $80 million for his role in Paramount's "Mission: Impossible III," which is expected to gross $400 million at the box office and an additional $200 million in DVD sales. Paramount, by contrast, is expected to make several million dollars in profit, one studio executive said.
Of course, studio accounting is notoriously difficult to decipher, and executives since Louis B. Mayer have resented their actors' big salaries and extravagant demands. As of last weekend, though, domestic box-office receipts this year totaled $6.29 billion, up 7% from the same period last year.
