Cruise severs film-making ties with studio

Wednesday, August 23, 2006 - 06:52 AM

Hollywood star Tom Cruise is at the centre of a “you’re fired-I quit” row at Tinseltown’s highest level.

On one side is Sumner Redstone, chairman of Viacom, which owns Paramount Pictures. On the other is the industry’s biggest and most bankable star, whose last seven films have each generated more than €81m.

Redstone has said Paramount will sever its long and profitable relationship with Cruise/Wagner Productions, Cruise’s company with producing partner Paula Wagner, telling the Wall Street Journal that Cruise’s “recent conduct has not been acceptable to Paramount”.

But Wagner told reporters that agents for Cruise/Wagner Productions stopped negotiating with Paramount over a week ago and since secured independent financing, effectively taking any contract-renewal deal off the table.

“For some reason, Paramount has chosen to negotiate in the press,” Wagner said, calling Redstone's announcement “surprising”.

“It’s not really the most businesslike approach,” she said. “We’ve had virtually no dealings with Mr Redstone.”

Paramount referred all calls on the matter to Viacom. Viacom spokesman Carl Folta had no comment today.

“As much as we like him personally,” Redstone is quoted as saying, “we thought it was wrong to renew his deal.” He then cited Cruise’s “recent conduct” as the reason.

In the past year or so, Cruise couch-hopped on Oprah Winfrey’s talk show while proclaiming his love for Katie Holmes, criticised the use of antidepressants and claimed that post-natal depression did not exist. He also got into an angry exchange with Matt Lauer on the Today show while defending his opinions.

Cruise/Wagner Productions has been based on the Paramount lot since 1992.

“We viewed ourselves as partners with Paramount,” Wagner said, adding that the collaboration had produced €1.9bn worth of business.

With War Of The Worlds and Mission: Impossible 3, Cruise helped earn nearly €826m for Paramount this year alone, Wagner said. Cruise/Wagner Productions brought M:I3 director JJ Abrams to the studio, she said, which recently inked a five-year arrangement with Abrams.

She and Cruise had been considering independent financing for their company “for a long time”.

“For us, this is a very new and exciting direction. We look forward to working with all the studios.”