I wrote last week about the decline of the movie star and the rising importance of movie brands. One small data point that drives this point home: Guardians of the Galaxy—a film with no stars featuring comic book characters virtually no one has ever heard of that opened almost entirely on the strength of the studio logo—grossed roughly as much in its opening weekend ($94 million) as Tom Cruise's latest, Edge of Tomorrow, has in its entire run (a hair over $98 million). In other words, this
is a way bigger draw than this
The times, they are a-changin'.