Paramount cuts Tom Cruise loose (1 Viewer)

[Patrick Sun]

Here's a link to the story.

 

[Christ Reynolds]

i was just reading that. he'll probably think they are being anti-scientologist, or something else. if he just shut up and did his job, i'd be able to look at his work more clearly. i've enjoyed him in quite a few movies.

CJ

 

[Malcolm R]

Are you taking notes, Disney? I think Mel Gibson's behavior has been even worse.

 

[teapot2001]

I'm sure his behavior wasn't just the issue. I read earlier that Paramount just didn't want to continue paying him so much money.

~T

 

[Cory S.]

It's more about Cruise not taking a lesser deal from Paramount than his "recent behavior", which if you sit down and really think about was well over a year ago.

He said squat during his promotional tour for Mission III. All the "behavior" issues came during the promotion of War of the Worlds.

 

[Tim Glover]

Just saw that on Yahoo as well. He's still a great actor. Just needs to chill a bit.

 

[Edwin-S]

I don't like the guy much, but what a farce. Cutting him loose because of his behavior? In Hollywood? Where stupidity and poor behaviour from the glitteratti appears to be de rigeur? Right! Getting rid of him is all about money. They obviously felt they were not getting a big enough ROI from him, so it was goodbye and thanks for all the fish.

 

[Dave Lipscomb]

The line about "cutting him loose" is bull. Nobody cuts an actor bringing in over a billion in one year. The Cruise/Wagner combo has been seeking external financing for over a year now, and cut off talks with Paramount for about a week.

This is Paramount's damage control, nothing more.

 

[John_Lee]

http://www.variety.com/VR1117948794.html

Coincidence?

 

[Mary M S]

When a star has had success you often see ‘creative control’ becoming a larger issue at time to renegotiate a contract.
I don’t believe the last MI did well domestically for Paramount and much of the press for the last year and more has indicated Holmes & Cruise are getting exceptionally hard to handle on the junket.

Cruise appears to be listening more to his ‘inner voice’ and I don’t think Paramount thinks they can continue to try and translate it for public box office consumption.

Future projects that C&W envisioned allowing (?) under a new Paramount deal, may have been the kicker.

I think Paramount is worried Cruise’s Star is on the eclipse if current trends continue and is getting out while the going is good.

 

[TravisR]

He wants more money than Paramount wants to give him and so he'll just go to another studio that will give him what he wants.

 

[Michael Reuben]

The story being put out by Cruise/Wagner Productions is that their future funding will come from outside the studios -- namely, from hedge funds. If that turns out to be the case, any deal with a studio will probably be limited to distribution for a fee, much like Lucasfilm or Ikon.

M.

 

[Kevin Grey]

But the two are related here- Paramount thinks his behavior has lowered the ROI on him (ie they are directly blaming the lower than expected grosses on MI:3 on his public antics).

 

[Cory S.]

Kevin,

That maybe true about Mission III but during the height of his "behavior" issues, War of the Worlds was Cruise's biggest film ever....and it's not like Mission III didn't make alot of money worldwide either.

It's going to be a pretty big DVD this year as well. So, it's not like Paramount hasn't made any money of the Cruise image during this two-year "image problem."

Again, it comes back to Cruise not wanting to take a lesser deal instead of his "recent behavior." That's what the press release should've said.

 

[MarkMel]

Maybe he wants to be out on his own to make battlefield earth II?

 

[Kevin Grey]

Yeah, but there was some question on whether he may have impacted WotW's gross too. Certainly, before the summer began, the idea that a Cruise/Spielberg alien invasion blockbuster could be a potential $300 million grosser was very possible.

And whether MI:3 is profitable or not, it is still perceived as underperforming. Maybe there are other reasons for that, but some obviously feel that Cruise may have damaged his core fanbase.

 

[Cory S.]

Kevin,

I would've agreed with this "behavior" issue hurting the gross if War of the Worlds hadn't clean upwards of 600 million worldwide, without DVD sales factored in.

And if his behavior was an issue during the summer of 2005, why did Paramount greenlight Mission III? Simple answer is that War of the Worlds made some serious dough for the studio. Again, it was Cruise's biggest film ever.

Mission III will get in the black very, very soon if it hasn't already. Yeah, it did underperform only because of the budget. Mission III, like most of Cruise's films, was another hit internationally.

 

[Kevin Grey]

I think there was still some question if Cruise hurt WotW's potential gross at the end but it wasn't conclusive since there obviously could have been other factors (a bit more grim than many might have expected, weak ending, etc) so he got the benefit of the doubt. MI:3, on the other hand, was being reviewed very well prior to release and the consensus seemed to be that it was audience friendly and the best of the series. But it ended up grossing the least of all of them. So I think at that point Paramount thinks "hmmm, maybe he isn't the draw that he once was" and, from the sound of things, couldn't renegotiate the deal at a better rate.

David Poland has a great writeup about this today but the bottom line seems to be that the backend deals these days are getting so exhorbitant that studios risk might be in the red on these movies even if they get $500 million worldwide and that the risk is becoming too much to bear.

 

[ToddP]

You're going to start seeing more and more of this kind of thing. Hollywood is moving toward securitizing future receiveables on blocks of films in a big way. It's actually very smart on their part, and will allow MUCH less money to come out of pocket for production purposes.

 

[Allen Hirsch]

There have been two stories about this in the Wall Street Journal this week. Cruise/Wagner claim that they have $100M lined up from two hedge funds who will give them more creative control than Paramount did. (So far, Cruise's team hasn't disclosed who those hedge funds are, and no one has taken the PR lead to claim they're financing Cruise's next pictures, according to the WSJ - which leads me to believe that's not yet a "done deal".)

There was also a story that overtures were made that instead of giving Cruise/Wagner $10M/year for their overhead (which was what the old deal called for), Paramount wanted to cut that back to something like $2.5M/year in the new deal.

Today's WSJ story had a funny lead about Merrill Lynch's hedge fund group having a private meeting where they showed Cruise's over the top performance on Oprah, jumping all over the couch. After the clip, the head guy says, "how do we hedge THAT risk?"