Paramount concern: Cruise's behaviorPublished August 23, 2006
Hollywood is a tolerant place. It will accept almost anything, except a bad balance sheet.
Ask Tom Cruise.
Drug and alcohol abuse, sexual infidelities, run-ins with the law, abhorrent beliefs--none of it keeps you from working in show business. Look at Woody Allen, Hugh Grant and Mel Gibson.
But Paramount Pictures is ushering Cruise's production company off its lot after 14 years and, according to Sumner Redstone, chairman of Viacom, the studio's parent, it's because Cruise has been, well, weird.
Truth be told, Cruise has been weird and expensive, and that's a lethal combo. So the star, who arguably has brought more money into Paramount than any other, is on the outs.
Redstone, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal posted online Tuesday, blamed Cruise's recent behavior for the performance of "Mission: Impossible III."
The fact that "Impossible" trilogy already might have exhausted itself apparently is not considered as big a factor as Cruise pummeling "Today" co-host Matt Lauer with Scientology's denunciation of antidepressant drugs and pouncing on Oprah Winfrey's couch to proclaim his love for Katie Holmes.
"As much as we like him personally, we thought it was wrong to renew his deal," Redstone told the Journal. "His recent conduct has not been acceptable to Paramount."
That's stunning, because being weird usually is considered a prerequisite for entry into the entertainment industry rather than a ticket out of it.
After all, if Hollywood suddenly rid itself of everyone who is weird, it would be like a neutron bomb went off. Structures would remain but the place would be a ghost town.
Of course, it's also possible Redstone finds something else disturbing, and it isn't weird.
The Los Angeles Times has reported "Mission: Impossible III" is likely to gross close to $400 million worldwide, with another $200 million in DVD cash, but Paramount probably will only break even because Cruise's take could be $80 million.
Cruise/Wagner Productions, Cruise's partnership with former agent Paula Wagner (wife of Cruise's current agent, Creative Artists Agency's Rick Nicita), has enjoyed an unusually lucrative arrangement with Paramount, through which it produces films for Paramount and other studios, some of which he stars in, some of which he doesn't.
This is no doubt in part because Cruise made tons of cash for Paramount with such hits as "Top Gun," "Days of Thunder" and "Mission: Impossible."
According to the Times, Paramount has a commitment to Cruise/Wagner of upwards of $10 million a year, though it's not known how much the company was actually spending. With current studio chief Brad Grey trying to rein in costs, the renewal offer was thought to be around $2.5 million for each of the next two years, closer to what fellow A-listers Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp get to underwrite their companies.
If Cruise was costly to Paramount, his behavior apparently made him costlier, according to Redstone.
Now Cruise/Wagner, which has a staff of about 10 people, will be vacating its two floors in the Lucille Ball Building. Wagner told Daily Variety the company is talking to others about distributing its films, which will be self-financed.
Some recent Cruise/Wagner efforts, such as "Elizabethtown" and "Narc," have not exactly done great business. But 2001's "The Others," a film on which Paramount passed, cost less than $18 million and brought in almost 12 times that for Miramax's Dimension Films, a tidy return.
If Paramount had been making money off Cruise, the Oprah couch thing and all that wouldn't be a big deal. It's always been more about dollars than sense in Hollywood.
To hear Redstone, however, a little Cruise control would have gone a long way.
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philrosenthal@tribune.com 
