The eponymous production company of megastar Tom Cruise and his agent/producing partner, Paula Wagner, found their cushy studio contract with Paramount — and its roughly $10 million in guaranteed annual overhead — not renewed yesterday after a breakdown in ongoing negotiations, but that wasn’t necessarily the worst of the news for the star.
“As much as we like [Cruise] personally, we thought it wrong to renew his deal. His recent conduct has not been acceptable to Paramount,” Sumner said.
That “recent conduct” — a tabloid-fantasy implosion of the star’s carefully cultivated public image — of course includes Cruise’s wacko, slightly-too-insistent courtship of Dawson’s Creek weak link Katie Holmes, his vociferous criticizing of the use of anti-depressants and other prescription medications and simultaneous touting of Scientology, an angry exchange with Today show host Matt Lauer regarding the same, and, naturally, his Mad Hatter couch-hopping routine on Oprah Winfrey’s daytime talk show (above).
Cruise/Wagner Productions has been housed at Paramount since 1992, but still, this severing or whittling down of expensive ties was not a complete surprise, given Mission: Impossible III‘s disappointing domestic box office take — despite the fact that more money was spent on cappuccinos during its production than most folks make in a year. No, the shock was in the way Redstone went out of his way to drop n-u-t-s on Cruise.
I love the apparently surging trend of twilight-era Hollywood producers and media moguls evidencing the sort of gruff bluntness that’s probably helped get them to where they are, whether it’s this or Morgan Creek Productions CEO James G. Robinson blasting Lindsay Lohan for her serial tardiness and absenteeism. But Redstone’s flat-out admission/assertion of his company’s trouble with Cruise’s erratic public behavior — already countered by the expected claims from Wagner that negotiations with Paramount had already been broken off — runs counter to the normal Tinseltown niceties, where as much (if not more) is often left unsaid as actually stated in these matters.
Honesty is typically such a lonely word, but it looks like it’s making some new acquaintances in Hollywood these days. Movie stars, you are on notice.
Fantastic… i especially loved the Dawson’s Creek review (linked) too.
I think Cruise will get it back together and stay on top at least nominally, just becacuse of his access to all that capital, financial and creative. Still, the public is never going to look at this guy quite the same ever again, no matter what he does.