Everyone’s talking today about how, while no one was looking, Step Brothers has somehow made almost $100 million. All this, in spite of middling reviews and an almost complete lack of buzz. And granted, this might have been a real surprise in a different year, but if you take a look at 2008’s overall box office numbers, you see a lot of films that were written off after disappointing first weekends and/or otherwise for some reason have not been touted as “hits”, but which have nonetheless very quietly grossed either just under or just over a million dollars.

The most notable example of this is probably What Happens in Vegas, which has made $80 million in just over three months. Its release never went wider than 3,000 screens, and it never hit number 1, but if you factor in international box office, it’s grossed $200 million––or, about six times its reported production budget. Why is no one is talking about this film, or what it means for the careers of Cameron Diaz or Ashton Kutcher,  while 27 Dresses’ $76 million domestic gross, on a very similar budget, is pretty widely considered confirmation that Katherine Heigl has risen to the  very selective stratosphere of actresses who can open a movie?

Because this kind of cost:performance ratio is exactly what’s expected of A- list stars like Diaz and Will Ferrell. No one’s giving cred to Brothers or Vegas for slowly scraping together $100 million because that exactly what medium-budget star vehicles need to do in order to keep said stars employed. No wonder the Warner Independents of the world are shitting down: when star-fueled, lowest common denominator “sleepers” make money with relatively very little maintenance, why would anyone waste time and money producing or acquiring “indies” that need constant coddling? Sleepers are no longer “surprises”––they’re the foundation of the system.