Completing a vertiginous year that has seen him ascend to stratospheric personal heights of giddy love and fatherhood, and plummet to depths of public ignominy and professional rejection, Tom Cruise and his film-producing partner Paul Wagner were named the new heads of the United Artists film studio today.
The sweet deal gives the pair — whose film productions include the Mission:Impossible movies, War of the Worlds, and The Last Samurai — complete control of the studio's production slate, expected to be about four films a year, and allows Cruise to appear in films from other studios. Wagner will rule the roost as chief executive of the storied company, owned since 1981 by MGM but founded in 1919 as a haven for artistes by D.W. Griffith and actors Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks.
Cruise hit biz-bottom in August when his and Wagner's 14-year producing deal with Paramount was not renewed by the studio. Sumner Redstone, chairman of Paramount parent company Viacom Inc., publicly blamed Cruise's bizarre behavior — his unhinged love declarations for Katie Holmes on Oprah and elsewhere, his dogmatic defense of the more contentious aspects of Scientology, in particular the wholesale rejection of psychiatry and medication — for suppressing public enthusiasm for their Mission:Impossible III film, a "disappointment" at the box office, even though it generated over $390 million worldwide.
"As much as we like him personally, we thought it was wrong to renew his deal," Redstone told the Wall Street Journal. "His recent conduct has not been acceptable to Paramount."
Putting it even more bluntly, Hollywood legend Lauren Bacall slammed Cruise's behavior in an '05 Time magazine interview. "His whole behavior is so shocking. It's inappropriate and vulgar and absolutely unacceptable to use your private life to sell anything commercially, but I think it's kind of a sickness," she said.
Article comments
1 - Joan Hunt
I'm tellin' ya, Cruise's split with Paramount was a bold and calculated move on his part. Up the crazy and watch 'em fire you, come back with a huge deal allowing you greater latitude and creative control. Who wins in this equation? Cruise.
It's a payoff on a plan set in motion a couple years ago and only recently accelerated to coincide with his dnarrowing window of opportunity.
2 - Silas Kain
There goes the stock prices. UA will be bankrupt within 24 months.
3 - Eric Olsen
crazy like a fox, eh?
UA is just a unit of MGM now - actually, from a purely business standpoint, Cruise's record is pretty good.
4 - Dave Nalle
Charlie Chaplin is spinning silently in his grave.
Dave
5 - Marcie
Wha tif Tom made a movie and nobody came?
6 - darlene sammarco
I'm creating a video documentary on psychiatric
forced institutionalization, forced drugs, video of psychiatric abuse, including Clozaril death of my grandson Jona, use of my daughter in ECT/ Clozaril Research without her consent, causing a seizure disorder and heart attack, and videos of other victims of psychiatric torture. I have been friends with Scientology staff for years.[Holly, Carley, Brenda in Minneapolis. I can send you a Video trailer of :Swimming With Sharks in Minnesota if you are interested.
If interested,I'll send you a video "trailer".]
7 - darlene sammarco
I'm creating a video documentary on psychiatric
forced institutionalization, forced drugs, video of psychiatric abuse, including Clozaril death of my grandson Jona, use of my daughter in ECT/ Clozaril Research without her consent, causing a seizure disorder and heart attack, and videos of other victims of psychiatric torture. I have been friends with Scientology staff for years.[Holly, Carley, Brenda in Minneapolis. I can send you a Video trailer of :Swimming With Sharks in Minnesota if you are interested.
If interested,I'll send you a video "trailer".]