NY Times: Is Hollywood’s Movie Star Era Over?
Far-left outlet notes failure of star-driven movies after October collapse
Welcome to the party, pals.
The New York Times published a grim look at this year’s theatrical releases. The report shares what right-leaning commentators have noted for years.
The era of the Movie Star is unofficially over.
Hollywood in DECLINE: Celebrities in PANIC as Cultural Relevance VANISHES in 2025 & 2026! https://t.co/C4reMXh0aR
— wdwpro (@wdwpro1) November 13, 2025
The timing couldn’t be more prophetic. Glen Powell, an actor with Cruise-level magnetism and a willingness to please, couldn’t push “The Running Man” to the top of the box office charts. The film opened with a weak $17 million.
The film’s international receipts were just as bad – $11 million to date.
The New York Times’ report could have seen those figures coming.
The article’s title pulls no punches: “25 Movies, Many Stars, 0 Hits: Hollywood Falls to New Lows”
The story itself doesn’t, either.
Theaters in the United States and Canada collected $445 million across all titles in October, the lowest total on record, after adjusting for inflation and excluding 2020, when the pandemic darkened screens.
For context, October ticket sales in 2019 totaled an adjusted $1 billion, according to Comscore.
Why? How much time do you have? It’s easy to point to the obvious causes:
- The rise of streaming competition
- The shrinking window for films hitting VOD platforms
- The rise of consequential video game titles
- Social media
- Shrinking attention spans in Gen Z
- The pandemic fallout
And the ones media outlets won’t go near.
- Stars made themselves toxic to half the country with their political views
- Stars are, for the most part, over-exposed
- The movies just aren’t very good, in toto
- The Woke Mind Virus still infects the industry
- Hollywood has lost touch with the common man
The blame game follows the classic improv guidebook: “Yes, and …” No one cause is to blame. Combine them all, and you’ve got a serious problem.
And we haven’t mentioned the letters “A” and “I” yet. Gulp.
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It doesn’t help that we collectively don’t trust critics as much as in the past. Some of the recent flops have been very well received critically, but that didn’t push audiences to sample them in theaters.
Jennifer Lawrence’s “Die My Love” earned a solid 74 percent “fresh” rating from critics. The few souls who paid to see it begged to differ – 45 percent “rotten.”
The industry’s problems aren’t all self-inflicted. Others, like alienating audiences with divisive, far-Left messaging, clearly are.
Just ask Josh Hutcherson.
Brittany Broski asks Josh Hutcherson to say something that he would say if he were brainwashed:
“‘I’m a Republican’, or anything that reads into that.”
(https://t.co/XXrjVqIBNM) pic.twitter.com/dfaDx0SFMz
— Pop Base (@PopBase) November 16, 2025
Or, better yet, Rachel Zegler. And they have plenty of company.
The year in movies will get a trio of boosts in the coming weeks.
- “Wicked for Good” (Nov. 21)
- “Avatar: Fire and Ash” (Dec. 19)
- “Zootopia 2” (Nov. 26)
Those sequels will cushion the blow for a reeling industry. None of the three is driven by star power. That’s no accident.
It’s the new normal. Even The New York Times admits it now.
Any hint of leftism is a negative, not merely far left.
The person closest to being a relatively young “movie star” I can think of today is Chris Pratt. He’s engaging, likeable, has a big string of hits and doesn’t say anything that would alienate anyone. There are some older ones, of course, but they’re starting to get long in the tooth.
A for the actresses, they’re all such slaves to identity politics and the abortion industry, I can’t think of a single one.