Devoted to show business and the entertainment industry

Tyler Perry (tylerperry.com)

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When thinking about who gets the best return on investment among Hollywood actors, what name comes to mind first? Tom Cruise, Adam Sandler, Julia Roberts, Will Smith or maybe Reese Witherspoon? None of them are even close to the leader.

Who is the big leader among Hollywood stars? The leader is Tyler Perry, who came from nowhere during the last couple of years with comedy hits - Diary of a Mad Black Woman in 2005 and Madea's Family Reunion early in 2006.

With both of the films costing less than 6 million to make, they brought in great returns. He is the leader in Hollywood among any actor or actress in return on investment (ROI).

Business Week recently conducted a study using the following as the guidelines to make the determination:

For the purposes of BusinessWeek.com's ROI award, we relied on published reports of costs estimates, provided by the Web site imdb.com, and applied the 2005 average marketing cost of $36 million a film. (Marketing costs are, of course, higher for larger films but in many cases sponsors help defray those costs.) We also applied the rule of thumb that a studio typically gets the proceeds from approximately half the tickets sold at the U.S. box office and the overall take from the box office is roughly one-third of the money a studio earns after a film has gone to play overseas and becomes a DVD or movie on pay TV.

To give you an example of how far ahead Perry is of everybody else, he has a return, measured from 2004 till today of 120% ROI. The next closest actors to him are Tom Cruise and Will Smith, who came in second with a 53% ROI. Tom Hanks was next with 43% ROI. Since 2004, no actresses are even in the running according to Business Week.

They make a comment that is only half right in connection to stars and their connection to the success of films:

BusinessWeek.com attempted to assess female stars, but validated one of Hollywood's darkest secrets: Women stars don't necessarily help boost ticket sales.

The reason that it is only half right, is because a little-known but indepth study by Tom Laughlin (Billy Jack creator) reveals that stars have nothing at all to do with the success of films or making money. That is the real dark secret of Hollywood.

It is nothing other than the fact that the highest producing films have similar characteristics written into the story that make it successful.

Tyler Perry simply underlines this fact. He made films for a certain audience with certain ingredients within them that appealed to who he was trying to reach. The result is that he is the leader in the business of show business. That in the end, is the only thing that counts.