By Steve Sailer
08/02/2014
From the Hollywood Reporter:
Who Is the New Denzel? Hollywood Struggles to Launch Next Black Stars
6:00 AM PST 08/01/2014 by Rebecca Ford
Even before Chadwick Boseman finished shooting Universalās James Brown biopic Get on Up, out Aug. 1, he was approached to star in new projects as Sam Cooke, Richard Pryor and, in Ang Leeās planned boxing movie, Muhammad Ali. āI was like, āNo. I canāt do that. Really?ā ā laughs Boseman, who last year fronted the Jackie Robinson baseball biopic 42. āThatās too much.ā
That Boseman, 32, would be courted to anchor upcoming films about three African-American icons speaks to his talent and experience. But it also highlights a harsh reality in Hollywood: There arenāt many choices. As the first generation of global black movie stars ages out of leading-man roles, the heirs apparent to Will Smith, 45; Denzel Washington, 59; and Eddie Murphy, 53, have not established themselves at the box office. āWhen you look at the landscape of up-and-coming talent, besides Chadwick and Michael B. Jordan (Fruitvale Station), there really arenāt a lot of names that come to mind, and thatās an area of concern for us,ā says Gil Robertson, president of the African American Film Critics Association. āWe havenāt really done enough to cultivate the next generation. Itās one thing to appear in a movie here or there, but itās another to really build a rich career.ā
In the 1990s and well into the 2000s, Hollywood boasted a throng of bankable black stars, with Smith (Independence Day: $817.4 million worldwide gross), Washington (American Gangster: $266.5 million) and Murphy (The Nutty Professor: $274 million) able to get movies greenlighted and open them worldwide.
This reminds me of something a veteran character actor told me back in the late 1990s. Iād rewritten a spec script for a TV sitcom in which the episodeās main guest role would be of a star black quarterback. āCould be tough to cast,ā he said. āNot a lot of black male acting talent.ā
That surprised me at the time because there was certainly a lot of demand for black male acting talent in the later 20th Century. That the supply was more limited than you might imagine was not publicly discussed.