Why A-list Hollywood stars like Michael Douglas, Julia Roberts and Nicole Kidman are happy to take more TV roles – it’s not just the money
- Battle for talent between streaming networks Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Disney and Apple, and their big budgets, is drawing top scriptwriters, directors, and actors
- With shows like Homecoming, Big Little Lies, The Morning Show, and Ozark, quality of TV in US exceeds that of most movies now, says director Michael Mann
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From Julia Roberts and Meryl Streep to Reese Witherspoon and Michael Douglas, Hollywood movie stars are being lured to television by higher production values, wider opportunities … and massive pay days.
Once the vastly poorer cousin of film, the small screen has enjoyed a stunning renaissance as members of the binge-watching generation swap trips to the multiplex for nights on the couch streaming the latest “premium” hit show.
Hollywood’s top A-listers are increasingly making the same switch.
“The perception here was quite parochial – you were categorised as one thing or another,” he says. “It was cinema looking down on TV, for good reason, because TV was pretty abysmal.”
That is around the combined budget of the top 130 most expensive feature films ever made – meaning colossal fees are possible for established marquee stars who make the switch.
Witherspoon had already converted to television, appearing in an unprecedented ensemble cast for HBO’s Big Little Lies opposite Streep, Nicole Kidman, Laura Dern and Zoe Kravitz.
At the Los Angeles launch for The Morning Show, Witherspoon says she was also drawn to television because it offered more diverse opportunities, particularly for older actresses and minorities, than traditionally white, male-dominated Hollywood studios.
“The idea that streaming services actually have empirical data that audiences want to see people of different ages, different backgrounds … creates an opportunity for new voices to emerge and new storytellers to emerge,” she says.
“So I’m enormously grateful to the streaming services – it’s changed my entire career.”
Directors, too, are eyeing up television for new opportunities.
Mann is working on a television series set during the Vietnam war. Steven Spielberg is writing a horror series for short-form streaming service Quibi, and bringing Masters of the Air – his second follow-up to Band of Brothers – to Apple’s new platform.
Ben Stiller – who has shot hit movies including Tropic Thunder, Zoolander and The Cable Guy – returned to his television roots this year behind the camera, directing Showtime’s prison break drama Escape at Dannemora.
“I’d never done anything quite like this,” he told journalists at a Los Angeles TV summit. “I knew I always wanted to do more serious stuff and work in different areas as a director. Television has changed.”
