TV Cast Finds Movie Success
Certain TV shows seem to breed future movie stars.
In the '50s, Steve McQueen and James Garner parlayed their small-screen success on westerns into big-screen hits. Clint Eastwood went from Rawhide to the top of the box office in the 1960s in a series of acclaimed spaghetti westerns. John Travolta was still appearing on Welcome Back, Kotter when he received his first Oscar nomination for Saturday Night Fever. And Michael J. Fox and Bruce Willis spent their summer vacations from their respective series, Family Ties and Moonlighting, making such blockbusters as Back to the Future and Die Hard.
Now Fox's hit sitcom, That '70s Show, is spawning six budding film careers. The show's young stars Topher Grace, Mila Kunis, Ashton Kutcher, Danny Masterson, Laura Prepon and Wilmer Valderrama are either appearing in features or have films set for release later this year.
Created by Bonnie and Terry Turner and Mark Brazil, That '70s Show has been steadily building an audience since it premiered in August 1998. The sitcom, which airs twice a week, averages more than 11 million viewers and scores heavily in the all-important teen demographic exactly the category that powers many of Hollywood's biggest blockbusters these days.
Set in 1978, the series chronicles the exploits of high school senior Eric Forman (Grace) and his five friends; girlfriend Donna (Prepon); cute but gullible Kelso (Kutcher); his spoiled girlfriend Jackie (Kunis); conspiracy theorist Hyde (Masterson); and girl-crazy foreign exchange student Fez (Valderrama).
Not surprisingly, most of the films that That '70s Show regulars are appearing in are aimed at the teen audience Kutcher recently starred in Dude, Where's My Car? and Masterson in Dracula 2000. The exception to the rule is Grace, who breaks away from his good-guy image in Steven Soderbergh's Traffic, playing the manipulative preppy who turns Michael Douglas' daughter into a heroin addict.
Prepon's projects include The Recycler and Hooking Up Ethan; Kunis stars in Get Over It; and Valderrama filmed Summer Catch last summer.
Brazil, who is also an executive producer of That '70s Show, isn't surprised the cast is finding success in features because they convey a kind of authenticity to young audiences.
"I think it's because they were kind of anti-casting,'' says Brazil. "We didn't want precious or cute or overdone. We wanted real, and that is what we went with. We got Laura off a tape in New York. She hadn't done anything before. Topher, Ashton and Wilmer hadn't either.''
