Everyone knows that the movie business is risky. We investigate these questions using a sample of over 2000 motion pictures. We discover that the movies are very risky indeed. The mean is dominated by rare blockbuster movies that are located in the far right tail. There is no typical movie because outcomes occur on all scales.
Stars move box-office revenue probabilities to higher outcomes, but drive variance to infinity.
Only 19 stars have an impact on the probability that a movie will be a hit.