Rising

In Flux

Bill Cosby
A career crossroads looms for TV's dominant dad: When NBC bids the slipping Cosby Show farewell next May, its star will attempt to reinvent himself as a quizmaster in a revival of You Bet Your Life.

Goldie Hawn
She has a seven-film deal at Hollywood Pictures — but getting people to see the movies is trickier. Hawn, 45, won only middling box office returns ($20 million so far) for Deceived. Her next films, Alone Together and Housesitter, could determine whether her mid-career attempt to shed her ditzy image will work.

Quincy Jones
The venerable producer's album Back on the Block won six Grammys this year. But Jones' TV productions — The Jesse Jackson Show and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air — haven't been blockbusters, and a falling-out with Michael Jackson kept Jones off his new album, Dangerous. But his Quincy Jones Entertainment Co. just got the rights to the movie version of the best-selling J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets, with Francis Coppola slated to direct.

Mario Kassar
The chairman of Carolco Pictures boasted 1991's highest-grossing film so far — Terminator 2: Judgment Day — but Kassar's free spending (he shelled out $3 million for Joe Eszterhas' Basic Instinct script and $15 million for Michael Douglas) is out of step with economic reality — and one reason that Carolco carries a copious debt.

Jay Leno
Uneasy lies the head that wears Carson's crown. Critics say Leno straitjacketed his comic style in order to inherit The Tonight Show. Now that he has it (starting next May), he may discover the only thing tougher than getting Johnny's job: getting Johnny's ratings.

Mike Medavoy
TriStar chairman Medavoy celebrated his 50th birthday on the awesome set of Hook, the Steven Spielberg fantasy that may determine the executive's future. TriStar has allowed Medavoy an open checkbook, but if Hook and the upcoming Bugsy ($40 million) flop, it may slam shut.

Sydney Pollack
The box office dive of the $50 million Havanadevalued Pollack, 57, as a director, so he temporarily retreated to his role as a producer. His 1991 scorecard: the slob comedy King Ralph ($33.5 million) and the stylish thriller Dead Again ($38.8 million).

Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer
After their $65 million Days of Thunder underperformed in 1989, producers Simpson and Bruckheimer left Paramount for Disney. Since then, the silence has been deafening, but Sessions, a female-detective flick, and Inherit the Mob, about a crime family, could put the 46-year-old producers back in action.

Brandon Tartikoff
Tartikoff, 42, has moved quickly after jumping from NBC to Paramount: He re-signed Eddie Murphy, and replaced Patriot Games' Alec Baldwin with Harrison Ford. But some charge he's bringing a small-screen mentality to movies, favoring no-name casts and rushing films like next month's All I Want for Christmas through production.

Written and reported by: Janice Arkatov, Giselle Benatar, Corie Brown, David Browne, Ty Burr, Alan Carter, David DiMartino, Margot Dougherty, Tina Jordan, Jim Oberman, Kelli Pryor, Tim Purtell, Jeffrey Ressner, Lisa Schwarzbaum, Frank Spotnitz, Benjamin Svetkey, Anne Thompson, and Jeffrey Wells