I almost think there'll be fewer. There may be years in which tons of celebrities we know about die, but I think there's fewer and fewer "big name" celebrities than there used to be. The way Hollywood uses actors right now, there's far more actors who enjoy a "moment in the sun" and never really gain major prominence. And the music and television industries currently follow the same model. Right now if the lead actors of the top 10 non-reality series on TV dropped dead tomorrow, I'd be damned if I recognized a single name. There's a handful of pop stars I know of (mostly for the wrong reasons when they become tabloid fodder) but I probably only have heard of maybe 2-3 acts currently on the top 40? It just seems like celebrity these days has been made so homogeneous that stars are almost throw-away. Many of the biggest name actors in film today also happened to be some of the biggest names 20 and even 30 years ago (Robert Downey, Jr., Johnny Depp, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Cruise, hell even Ah-nold still garners headlines when he does a film) or even 40 years (Meryl Streep, anyone?). Very few of those who have become big names over the past 20 years have really had any staying power. Jennifer Lawrence may be the biggest new star of the past two decades. Look how quickly Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart flickered out after Twilight made them huge stars. And the only reason anyone still remembers the names of Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson enough to care about the rather minor films they've been in of late if because of how very huge Harry Potter was. Far more have come and gone and I personally struggle to remember their names years later, don't you? The era of the mega Hollywood star is coming to an end over the course of the next generation, as most of the remaining big names that have endured through the 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, and today will be old enough to make Howie Carr's death pool. Hell, someone actually DID have Gene Wilder in the pool when he died. And there just aren't many replacing them with the same impact and legacy, so I really think 2016 will stand as a very rare year - we won't see many more of them, and unless something changes to make Hollywood/the recording industry/television diversify again and find young actors who are really memorable and actually have the acting chops to continue making box office smashes/multi-platinum albums/long running top-10 TV shows, we eventually won't even have the potential for another year like this.
I guess the last two Vermont ComicCons have been good examples of this, already from a generation ago. Clerks and Mallrats were very popular cult films, and a lot of people know writer/director Kevin Smith aka "Silent Bob" now...but the guests at these two ComicCons here? Last year Brian O'Halloran and this year Jeremy London. Now if I hadn't mentioned the movie titles first, how many people could have placed these two? Despite the fact they not only starred in those films, they were respectively THE stars of those films (and O'Halloran was in both). Would anyone remember London from 7th Heaven? Doubt it. But again, a once-popular TV show without a lasting star. Contrast that to the star of Evil Dead, Bruce Campbell, who is at once recognizable and memorable despite the film that started his career was from 35 years ago.
But seriously, I don't remember a year with this many celebrities I liked going.
