With Harrison Ford dusting off his fedora in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and taking in $150 million over the last four days, is there any chance he can reclaim his rightful place as Hollywood’s all-time biggest star?

Not even close, if you’re basing stardom on all-time total movie box office grosses, the traditional industry barometer for such things. Excluding voice roles, the biggest star in the world is Samuel L. Jackson with more than $4 billion in U.S. grosses and nearly $8 billion worldwide, earning the actor a page in the Guinness Book Of World Records. To overtake Jackson, Harrison Ford, who currently resides in fourth place, would need Indiana Jones to pull in $951.2 million domestically. (As Short Round might say, “Very funny, Dr. Jones! Very funny!”)

But ranking stars on total box office is woefully inadequate in determining a star’s true bankability. For one thing, it over rewards an actor like Samuel L. Jackson for appearing in 42 percent of the movies produced since 1985. (An overstatement, but not by much: Jackson has made roughly 80 movies over the last 20 years, an average of four a year.) “In general, this chart heavily favors people who have appeared in one or two high-grossing movie series,” says Bruce Nash, founder of the box-office stats site The Numbers. This is why Orlando Bloom tops the list for average box office gross, thanks to his appearance in the Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean franchises. His other movies? Crap like Elizabethtown and The Kingdom of Heaven.

To help us devise a more accurate metric for determining a star’s true value, Nash created a brand-new stat, Box Office Power, which is based on a points system. To qualify for the chart, an actor or actress must have appeared in more than ten movies with a wide release, appearing in more than 1,000 theaters, in the United States. The scoring works as follows:

+3 points for each leading role in a wide release that is either a stand-alone movie or the first movie in a franchise, and that earns over $100 million at the box office.
+2 points for each leading role in a wide release that is the second, third, fourth, etc., movie in a franchise, and which earns over $100 million at the box office.
+1 point for each supporting role in a wide release (of any sort) that earns more than $100 million at the box office.
-1 point for each leading or supporting role in a wide release that earns less than $100 million at the box office.

So what do we find when we crunch the numbers? The all-time top star is Tom Cruise with a total score of 27. “What this says is that Tom Cruise has consistently delivered hits while appearing in a wide variety of movies,” said Nash. “Love him or hate him, he has a strong claim to being the most bankable star over the past twenty years.” While there’s no way to know if he will continue to be the most bankable star for the next thirty, what’s clear is that contrary to all the negative press (e.g., couch-jumping, attempts to be “down” with Kanye West, Scientology…) Cruise is still the safest bet in Hollywood. (…)

Source: Esquire, May 27, 2008.