Movie stars' stock plummets

The math is ugly. In the past, Warners had spread the risk around. If you look back at other expensive Warners flops, the studio was always shrewd enough to recruit a partner who put up a hefty piece of the budget, as it recently did with "Speed Racer" (co-financed by Village Road Show). But for "Body of Lies," which Warners insists cost less than $100 million (rival studios say higher), Warners had no safety net -- it put up all the money, which means the studio could take a substantial loss.

Warners isn't dumb. It didn't have a partner on the picture because it believed that a Ridley Scott film with two giant movie stars was a pretty good bet. It wasn't. There are always a thousand explanations bouncing around Hollywood when a movie fails (e.g., no one wants to see movies about politics or the Middle East, studios are cannibalizing the market by releasing too many movies, moviegoers are distracted by the bad economy and the dramatic presidential race). But guess what? That didn't stop "Beverly Hills Chihuahua" from opening well -- or the sci-fi thriller "Eagle Eye" just before it.

All the explanations have a ring of truth, but the real sea change here involves Hollywood movie stars. This isn't movie fatigue. This is movie star fatigue.

Crowe and DiCaprio (and Johnny Depp and Tom Hanks and Brad Pitt et al.) get paid huge sums of money because they are supposed to open movies. Period. When you sign a contract with Crowe, it doesn't have an asterisk next to the $20-million salary commitment, saying, "Oh, by the way, this doesn't apply to Middle East thrillers, period boxing dramas, westerns or cute comedies set in the South of France" (just to name a few Crowe movies that -- ahem -- haven't been gigantic box-office successes).