Don’t think people realize how insane Tom Cruise and Will Smith’s box office runs were. At one point, both of these guys were putting together ridiculous streaks of movies making $100M+ worldwide, and the crazy part is how many of them were completely original movies or one-off projects. Cruise had an 11 movie worldwide streak from COCKTAIL (1988) through EYES WIDE SHUT (1999). COCKTAIL. RAIN MAN. BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY. DAYS OF THUNDER. FAR AND AWAY. A FEW GOOD MEN. THE FIRM. INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE. MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE. JERRY MAGUIRE. EYES WIDE SHUT. That is absolutely ridiculous. And then from 2000 to 2006 he had another insane run with MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE II, VANILLA SKY, MINORITY REPORT, THE LAST SAMURAI, COLLATERAL, WAR OF THE WORLDS and MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III. Will Smith had his own monster stretch starting with BAD BOYS II in 2003. BAD BOYS II. I, ROBOT. SHARK TALE. HITCH. THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS. I AM LEGEND. HANCOCK. SEVEN POUNDS. MEN IN BLACK 3. AFTER EARTH. FOCUS. Eleven straight movies making more than $100M worldwide. And look at how many different kinds of movies are in there. A Michael Bay action sequel, animated shark movie, romantic comedy, drama, zombie apocalypse movie, superhero movie, sci-fi, heist movie. No Marvel Cinematic Universe. No Star Wars. No Harry Potter. Just two movie stars whose names alone could get people into theaters. That’s the part that feels almost impossible now. The modern box office is so dominated by established IP that it’s easy to forget there was a time when Tom Cruise could open COLLATERAL or THE LAST SAMURAI, Will Smith could open HITCH or THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS, and audiences would simply show up. The level of star power these two had was ridiculous.