It looks like Vin Diesel has bested Dwayne Johnson in at least one arena, clocking in at number one on Forbes’ list of the highest-grossing actors of 2017 — and throwing a little more fuel on that Fast & Furious feud (say that five times fast). Thanks to The Fate of the Furious and xXx: Return of Xander Cage, Diesel edged out his Fast co-star / arch-nemesis, and with fewer 2017 releases under his belt.
Movies are a mixture of talent, art, skill, business, and stupid luck. For a fascinating example of all of the above, I direct your attention to a great article at Shortlist (via The Playlist) about the history of Face/Off. As it turns out before the movie was made by John Woo with stars Nicolas Cage and John Travolta, it was very nearly directed by Demolition Man filmmaker Marco Brambilla and a p
When last we saw Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow he was, I don’t know, doing pirate stuff probably? After the first Pirates of the Caribbean, 2003’s The Curse of the Black Pearl, all these movies began to blend together. Some sword fights, a mystical MacGuffin, an all-powerful bad guy, a couple battles at sea, blather, mince, repeat. Even though the latest, Dead Men Tell No Tales, comes from a new pair of directors (Kon-Tiki’s Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg), it’s basically indistinguishable from the three previous sequels, except that it’s even worse than they were.
Last year, Forbes dubbed Adam Sandler the most overpaid actor in Hollywood with the help of some basic math skills — the publication looks at how much a studio makes for every dollar they paid their leading man. Johnny Depp came in second place in 2014, and although Sandler has had an impressively terrible year, Depp succeeded in overthrowing the former funny man and stealing his overpaid crown.