Just weeks after Star Jones was fired from her popular daytime talk show, The View, the man with the million dollar smile, Tom Cruise, has been dropped from his 14-year production deal with Paramount Pictures.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Viacom Inc. Chairman Sumner Redstone said: "As much as we like him personally, we thought it was wrong to renew his deal," adding that, “"His recent conduct has not been acceptable to Paramount."
When asked for comment, Paula Wagner, Cruises business partner in his production company, Cruise/Wagner Productions, stated that Redstone's comments were "offensive" and "undignified.”
Cruises films up to 2004 have grossed more than $2.5 billion dollars in domestic box office receipts alone, according to the-movie-times.com. In 2005, Spielberg’s War of the Worlds grossed nearly $600 million world wide in box office tickets, excluding the DVD and rental sales.
The man who now demands $31 million a picture has come a long way since earning only $850 for his work in TAPS (1981), but after Mission Impossible III opened to less that stellar reviews and box office sales, and this latest development with Paramount, the million-dollar man may need to start looking for a new job at the Scientology Center in Beverly Hills. After all, it has been alluded to in the past that the church is a leading reason for Cruises antics, and now he has lost one of the most lucrative production deals ever commanded by an A-list Hollywood star. It sounds to me list someone could use some major PR damage control. Pierce Mattie PR’s number is at the bottom.
Posted by Lance Buckley on August 23, 2006 12:45 PM
| Permalink
