Few topics animate Hollywood business lunches quite like the state of the movie star: where to find them, how to make them, and whether they still matter at all. In its annual Next Gen issue, which spotlights the industry's future leaders both on screen and off, The Hollywood Reporter has tried to provide answers, relying on its own instincts along with surveys of executives, creatives and producers. That process flagged Sydney Sweeney well before her Euphoria fame and Glen Powell years ahead of his Top Gun ascent. More recently it featured David Jonsson, who this summer stood on the Comic-Con stage taking on the mantle of Black Panther.
The industry has leaned on a steady supply of youthful stars since its earliest days, from Clara Bow to James Dean to the Brat Pack, with each generation of talent both shaping and serving the needs of its moment. Even as studios slash content spending and mergers batter legacy players, a combination of market forces and audience appetites is working in favor of a certain kind of young performer. For all the upheaval, 2026 is a surprisingly good time to be an upwardly mobile talent. Call it entertainment's very own K-curve.
The route to young stardom looks little like it did even a decade ago. In the late 2010s, intellectual property minted stars, the way Spider-Man lifted Tom Holland and Zendaya in 2017. There was also a well-worn path in which an auteur tapped a talent and the festival and awards circuit sealed their status, as with Timothée Chalamet in Luca Guadagnino's Call Me by Your Name. Prestige television worked too: Anya Taylor-Joy landed atop studio wish lists only after Netflix's The Queen's Gambit, while Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones owed their rise to Hulu's Normal People.
Lately, a new class has arrived fully formed from a wave of young adult series. Shows like The Summer I Turned Pretty, Sterling Point and Off Campus built fervent fan bases and overnight audiences for their leads, creating instant industry appeal for Next Gen class of 2026 members Lola Tung and Stephen Kalyn. And though it is hard to recall a time before the omnipresence of Heated Rivalry, that hockey drama debuted only a year ago, and leads Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams have vaulted to a fame that yields appearances everywhere from the Golden Globes to the Winter Olympics to a Monopoly board.
On the film side, Gen Z is readily answering the siren call of Nicole Kidman and her pinstripe pantsuit. Over the past year, zoomers became the most active moviegoing age demographic, a direct rebuke to the old wisdom that kids should stream while adults keep the cinemas. In the spring, Inde Navarrette, the breakout of Obsession, proved stardom can still happen the old-fashioned way, one popcorn bucket at a time.
Once fame is achieved, insiders who work with and cast young talent say the next target should be theatrical film, which even skeptics agree best proves staying power and earning potential. A lead role in a streaming feature may raise an actor's quote, but the smarter play is a smaller role, farther down the call sheet and ideally beneath battle-tested A-listers, on a film backed by a robust studio marketing department with a healthy P&A spend. Caution is also advised before headlining a big-budget IP play: with superhero fatigue and the Letterboxd generation's taste for director-driven fare, a DC or Marvel lead is no longer a guaranteed coronation, and not every toy-turned-tentpole is equal, as Supergirl and Masters of the Universe showed. Range matters too. A YA series success should be followed by a director-driven feature, and a horror breakout should resist another thriller, all without alienating newly won young fans.
Those fans are mostly women. Off Campus reached 36 million viewers worldwide in its first 12 days, according to Amazon, and is Prime Video's most viewed debut season ever among women aged 18 to 34. After its finale, Warner Bros. Discovery said Heated Rivalry drew 10.6 million U.S. viewers on HBO Max, two-thirds of them women. Yet theatrical slates are not geared toward female audiences, with romantic comedies treated as streamer territory and the seemingly obligatory annual Colleen Hoover adaptation offering few jobs. Still, Off Campus stars Belmont Cameli and Kalyn have split the difference, each set to appear alongside the ever audience-conscious Sweeney in a studio film: Cameli in Sony's female-focused Sleepy Hollow adaptation from Barbie banner LuckyChap, and Kalyn in Lionsgate's sequel to The Housemaid.
Then there are the extracurriculars. Fashion and luxury brands are moving faster than in past eras to sign zeitgeisty names with big social footprints. In the short window since Storrie and Williams entered the public consciousness, Storrie landed a YSL beauty contract and a Tiffany & Co. jewelry ambassadorship, while Williams fronted Balenciaga's Summer 2026 campaign and was named a Bulgari brand ambassador. In the six months since Obsession's May release and $500 million box office haul, Navarrette has become the face of Gap's Fall 2026 collection and David Yurman's holiday campaign. When a watch advertisement pays more than a sophomore feature, young stars can afford to be choosier, so long as they do not wait too long.
It is often said Hollywood has relied on the same 12 names for the past two to five decades to fill theater seats. But when Tom Cruise can't open a movie, even the most risk-averse executives start hunting for new talent, and on this year's list they will find plenty to choose from.
