It’s a story that could be written every year, but felt particularly prominent this fall: Is this the end of movie stars? For every sign that yes, casting a mega-recognizable name and face does matter – it’s hard to imagine One Battle After Another doing $200 million worldwide without Leonardo DiCaprio – there are dozens of signs that maybe it doesn’t, much (not least that, for example, 10 years ago a DiCaprio movie might be expected to make several hundred million more). The final stretch of the year has been particularly dire, with bombs from established and up-and-coming stars alike dropping on a near-weekly basis. Margot Robbie, Colin Farrell, Dwayne Johnson, Jennifer Lawrence, Channing Tatum, Glen Powell, Julia Roberts, Sydney Sweeney, Jennifer Lopez, Jared Leto… is anyone left to qualify as a movie star in terms of ticket sales, not just charisma?
Now, some of these stars, even forever-young Leo, are well over 50, and that’s part of the problem: It’s not natural to expect someone like Julia Roberts or George Clooney (who reckons with some of these issues in his movie Jay Kelly, tellingly released on Netflix) to remain major box office attractions for two or three decades. (And honestly, those two are pretty well-acquitted compared to some of their peers, having delivered decent grosses for Ticket to Paradise a few years back.) But plenty of last-best-hope types have experienced some major stumbles, too – even as they continue to dominate headlines in ways that suggest some form of bankability (or at least clickability). So in the spirit of year-end lists, let’s take a serious accounting of movie stars under 50, and try to sort out who might belong on a list of the ten biggest. In the spirit of now, we are heavily favoring their box office track records from the past five years, with a particular eye toward what happened with them this year.
Credits: Anyone But You, the whole reason they’re paired together here in the first place, and a major coup as a star-driven romantic comedy that opened soft but became a major word-of-mouth hit, the biggest in its genre in years. Powell also co-starred in Twisters, which was a franchise play but one that depended largely on his image for its sell.
Debits: They both had a rough fall: Sweeney’s fighter biopic Christy went the way of The Smashing Machine, while the more mainstream-friendly Powell vehicle The Running Man got its ass kicked by Predator: Badlands, a movie with zero human characters. Maybe Elle Fanning and Dek should take their place here.
Bottom Line: The Housemaid looks like a hit; even if that’s attributable to its popular source-material novel, it’ll give Sweeney a boost. But both she and Powell might have to settle for being well-liked mid-tier stars, depending on how the next few years shake out. Powell’s streaming-TV success with Chad Powers may indicate that he can’t quite follow his Top Gun co-star Tom Cruise into the theatrical-only zone.
Credits: Post-COVID, Tatum came roaring back with healthy grosses for old-fashioned star vehicles like The Lost City, teaming him with Sandra Bullock, and, perhaps more impressively, Dog, a movie that’s just him and a dog for much of its running time.
Debits: So why did Fly Me to the Moon bomb last year, followed by an exceedingly modest run for Roofman this year? They’re both entertaining crowdpleasers that seem to understand Tatum’s strengths.
Bottom Line: Tatum is the oldest actor on this list, and he’s already achieved a level of success that gives him less to prove going forward. Like past Steven Soderbergh collaborators Clooney and Matt Damon, he may be headed for the perfectly fine status of brand-name actor with good taste, rather than box office superman.
Credits: Two Wicked movies. Does she need anything else? Between her pre-existing following and winning over new fans via her Oscar-nominated Wicked performance, it seems pretty likely that whatever Grande does next (apparently she’s in a Meet the Parents sequel coming next year) will generate a lot of interest. Cynthia Erivo has tended more toward prestige projects; Grande’s pop instincts may give her the edge in movie stardom.
Debits: Is being a famous singer (albeit one who in turn started as a Nickelodeon actress) kind of a cheat code? Or does it just show understanding of how important branding is, even on individual performers?
Bottom Line: She could probably be a top-five movie star if she really went all-out, though if she doesn’t, that will only speak well of her.
Credits: Between Challengers and The Greatest Showman, she’s got the beginnings of a strong non-IP track record. Between the musical and the Spider-Man movies, kids know who she is.
Debits: Scarcity. She’s starred in exactly eight live-action movies so far, five of which are either Spider-Man or Dune. Of the remaining three, the aforementioned two were hits, but she’s not exactly performing constant feats of movie-star strength. (She sat 2025 out, for example.)
Bottom Line: Zendaya’s next project is The Drama, an A24-produced movie co-starring Robert Pattinson. But even if it turns into her Die My Love, money-wise, her triple feature of The Odyssey, another Spider-Man, and another Dune should keep her profile high (if still in need of periodic franchise-free proving).
Credits: Her name recognition is extremely high, especially among the youth, thanks to Wednesday on Netflix. And while she’s not the only reason Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and the last two Scream movies hit, she felt like an undeniable value-add to some pretty creaky IP.
Debits: Wednesday is a television show, and Ortega isn’t gold in everything. This year’s Death of a Unicorn and Hurry Up Tomorrow showed off how her eclectic and ambitious taste can also lead her into terrible movies nobody likes or wants to see.
Bottom Line: Most stars Ortega’s age don’t really distinguish between movies and TV, which seems like the case here, given her Wednesday success. But her upcoming projects with J.J. Abrams, Cathy Yan, and Taika Waititi imply that she intends to continue that Beetlejuice momentum without depending on IP as firmly as many of her peers (or her past movie work). Teen-show stars are often dicey propositions on the big screen, but it’s easy to picture her sticking around.
Credits: Your mom knows who she is. Pretty much everyone knows who she is, which is not something many others whose biggest hits are based on YA books can say. Hell, there are plenty of other Oscar winners who can’t say that. No Hard Feelings was a comedy hit a few years ago, though it seems like it should have done twice the business it did.
Debits: Even if it wasn’t really designed for mainstream popcorn-slinging, Die My Love was an audience-alienating flop (and very much worth seeing!).
Bottom Line: The combination of Hunger Games, X-Men, and a bunch of successful Oscar dramas have secured her place, and in a different environment she might well have become the distaff equivalent of DiCaprio (who will co-star with her in a Martin Scorsese movie). The question is whether she’ll have a Catch Me If You Can/The Departed-style mainstream hit.
Credits: Obviously dinosaurs are the star of Jurassic World Rebirth, yet at the same time, could it have hurt to inject a genuine name into an otherwise scaled-back dino adventure? A case could be made that she was to this movie as Jack Black was to Minecraft.
Debits: Compared to a decade ago, where it seemed like ScarJo in a non-franchise title like Lucy was a major solo draw, her power in non-IP titles like Fly Me to the Moon seems limited – hence her recently signing up for a bunch more franchise fare.
Bottom Line: Johansson seems like she wants to extend her peak-movie-star years a bit longer; she’s queuing up roles in a sequel to The Batman and Mike Flanagan’s new Exorcist movie, and plans to re-up for another Jurassic World. Her visibility will remain huge, but is she accidentally turning herself into a lady Chris Pratt, who has TV/commercial/crap movie’d himself off a list like this?
Credits: Between Barbie, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Wolf of Wall Street, and Suicide Squad, she’s been in a bunch of hits and has been a household name for years at this point.
Debits: Her long-awaited Barbie follow-up, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, turned out to be not so big, or bold, or long-awaited. A sampling of 2025 movies that made more money: Clown in a Cornfield; Sarah’s Oil; Death of a Unicorn.
Bottom Line: Her upcoming starring role in Wuthering Heights will likely outgross her previous movie in a single day. If it doesn’t, she’ll need another hit fast.
Credits: The vast majority of his movies so far have been hits; his Fantastic Four movie was the last high-profile flop, and that was over a decade ago. Specifically, Sinners is his biggest since Black Panther – with twice as much screen time, given his dual leading role. It’s hard to imagine that movie breaking as big as it did without him.
Debits: Since 2020, he’s had all of three movies in wide release, including one (A Journal for Jordan) that was barely promoted. He’s smart not to let his work be overexposed, but it’s a little deflating that his Sinners follow-up, a Thomas Crown Affair remake, isn’t due until spring 2027.
Bottom Line: He’s easily one of the biggest leading men in Hollywood.
Credits: Stone has been on an auteur kick since winning her second Best Actress Oscar, working with Yorgos Lanthimos two more times and playing a supporting part in Ari Aster’s Eddington. And while it would be a stretch to call this year’s Lanthimos movie Bugonia a hit for her, it’s well on its way to matching or outgrossing several buzzy horror titles (Bring Her Back; Companion) as well as several arthouse-director darlings (The Phoenician Scheme; Black Bag). It’s a flex of a sort! More broadly, most of the movies she’s starred in over the past decade have done well.
Debits: She hasn’t done a completely mainstream movie in nearly five years, though when she did, it hit pretty well.
Bottom Line: Her work with Lanthimos and others is exceptional. But maybe it would be nice to see her in a crowd-pleasing comedy again. Not at the expense of artier stuff – just once every couple years!
Credits: Is Chalamet the first truly post-pandemic movie star? Before 2020, he was Greta Gerwig’s Best Supporting Actor. Since 2021, his diverse array of hits include two Dune movies, Wonka, and A Complete Unknown, with a supporting role in the Netflix hit Don’t Look Up and the arthouse hit The French Dispatch. Marty Supreme seems poised to do well this holiday season; at very least, it will net him another Oscar nomination, and it could boost his bankability even further.
Debits: Bones and All flopped. It was a big ask.
Bottom Line: He’s trying to be one of the greats, which doesn’t always involve racking up hit after hit, but at the moment, it’s hard to think of someone more in-demand.