Cause Viva Laughlin was friggin' genius

Hugh Jackman is "writing" a comic for Virgin Comics.
Say what you will about TV and movie writers (Whedon, Guggenheim, Lopresti) coming to comics. What I'm talking about is something different, and seems, at least for now, to be primarily a Virgin Comics thing.
It's the "Created by" credit. Virgin currently has their "Director's Cut" line with three books; The Megas (Jonathan Mostow), Dock Wallooper (Ed Burns) and The Game Keeper (Guy Ritchie). Previously they've had John Woo's Seven Brothers and Shekhar Kapur's Snake Woman.
"Virgin Voices" has the Nicholas Cage Voodoo Child book and Jenna Jameson's Shadow Hunter (I'm assuming this will be the branding under which Jackman's book exists).
Now, full disclosure, I've only read the first volumes of Seven Brothers and The Game Keeper respectively. I gave Seven Brother's a try mostly due to Garth Ennis, and Game Keeper looked like a simple enough action tale in the quasi-vein of Andy Diggle's best work, The Losers.
Now the marketing copy for all of these books gives you the idea that the famous names are knee deep in the story, working with established comic writers to bring their singular vision to the printed page.
But I do sometimes wonder.
Is Guy Ritchie really story-conferencing with Jeff Parker over each issue of Gamekeeper? Is he reviewing each script and penciled/inked page? Maybe I'm overly cynical but I just don't see it happening. I imagine a business deal between Virgin and Ritchie that goes something like this:
Virgin - "So, we think your name above the title might push a few more of these books out the door, you got any ideas"
Guy - "Some action thing, a badass military guy or something whose renounced his life of violence?"
Virgin - "Great, we'll get on that and send you the trade in about ten months"
Guy - "That's fine, you wanna cut a check or just wire me the money?"
It's the marketing that bugs me.
Would Dock Walloper! have been published if Ed Burns name wasn't on the cover? Who thinks that putting Ed Burns name on the cover is gonna bring the readers in in droves anyways?
Why do companies think that attaching "famous" names to comics is enough to make them good/popular?