Stardust is a 1974 British musical drama film directed by Michael Apted and starring David Essex, Adam Faith, and Larry Hagman.

It features a number of pop/rock performers, including Essex, Faith, Keith Moon, Marty Wilde, Dave Edmunds, Paul Nicholas and Edd Byrnes.

The Stray Cats embark on a successful tour of the US, where they meet their new manager, Porter Lee Austin, a wealthy Texan who has bought a majority financial interest in Jim and the group.

The other Stray Cats, especially drummer J.D., are frustrated at being ignored while Jim, promoted by Porter Lee and Mike, becomes the focus of media attention.

and the other Stray Cats inform Jim they are severing ties with him, leaving him as a solo act with no close friends except Mike and Danielle.

Jim embarks on an ambitious project to compose and sing a progressive rock opera glorifying women, in honor of his late mother.

After two years, Porter Lee pushes Jim to come out of seclusion in order to make money to cover unpaid taxes and avoid being forgotten by his public.

[3] Connolly said he and Puttnam were thinking about a sequel to That'll Be the Day even before the latter film was released, and they went on holiday to Italy to plan it.

The job went to Michael Apted who had been the first choice to direct That'll Be the Day and had recently begun work in features with Triple Echo.

[4] Apted said Stardust is "about the media, success, drugs, isolation, and a lot of other things... We merely put up the idea that pop heroes are often created by other people, not themselves, and the whole awful business is usually deceiving and self destructive.

[3] Hagman credited his work in Stardust with helping him develop his later character of oil baron J.R. Ewing on the TV series Dallas.

[9] According to Connolly, Adam Faith was cast after Ringo Starr, who had played "Mike" in That'll Be the Day, declined to appear in the sequel because "having lived through the experience in reality as a member of the Beatles he wasn't keen to revisit it.

"[3] Michael Brooks wrote that Starr declined because of "an uncomfortable resemblance between a key subplot and the real-life story of Pete Best's departure from the Beatles.