Sipa via AP ImagesAustralia is kind of a bust after debuting at No. 5, right? What happens to a big-name star like Nicole Kidman after something like this? Does she lose status?
—Mary Woods
Power producers and agents have been rumbling for years that Nicole Kidman has passed her prime, that her once-endless list of fascinating attributes has dwindled to include only her hypnotically featureless forehead.
Off the record, these sources have said that she's delivered too few bona fide hits, that she has continuously lost power since The Others in 2001.
Yet—like a very leggy monster from the world of H.P. Lovecraft—she manages, every few years, to rise up from her burrow and feed. The reason is a sort of open secret in the movie business...
...and it's a list. It's called the Ulmer Scale, and every decent producer in town uses it when casting big-budget—or even microbudget—films.
"It's a scale of bankability," casting director and author Bonnie Gillespie explains. "It calculates everything—overseas sales, DVD sales—and Nicole Kidman is still near the top of the list for women."
In other words, Kidman may feel done, especially when you stack her up against, say, Robert Pattinson (everybody screeeaaaam!), but there really aren't that many other well-established stars out there who can deliver guaranteed millions in revenue.
One other thing: Australia may have debuted at No. 5, but $14 million this weekend is still a heck of a lot of money. (And it's more than the last Baz Luhrmann-Kidman tango Moulin Rouge! opened with back in '01.)
"That's really not bomby enough to ruin either of their careers," Gillespie says. ""It would need to be a huge bomb, an Ishtar-type bomb, to affect either of them. At that level, they're pretty much untouchable."
At worst, maybe Kidman will take a pay cut. Of a measly $2 million.
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