Get your best ‘oh my god!’ face ready people, Tom Cruise and Paramount have called it a day.
You’ll remember we told you a few weeks back how Mission: Impossible megastar Tom Cruise’s production company were reviewing a cut-down deal from the new honcho at Paramount – well the two parties haven’t reached a workable compromise and Cruise/Wagner will no longer operate under a development deal for Paramount Pictures.
The current deal comes to an end on August 31st and was said to be worth somewhere in the region of $10 million a year. New chairman Brad Grey’s renewal offer was thought to undercut that by 8 million big ones, leaving TC and his business partner Paula Wagner with very little doubt that they are no longer seen as top-table material at the studio.
It seems that the poor performance of M:I III is not the only reason why Cruise/Wagner lost it’s shine in Hollywood. Sumner Redstone, chairman of Paramount parent company Viacom told the Wall St. Journal that the cut-price deal was largely down to Cruise behaving like a bit of a prat in the public eye recently.
“As much as we like him personally, we thought it was wrong to renew his deal,” Redstone said. “His recent conduct has not been acceptable to Paramount.”
It’ll take more than that to rob the Cruiser of his shit-eatin’ grin - according to Paula Wagner, this is the chance she and Tom have been waiting for. “This is a dream of Tom and mine,” she stated.
Course it is… we’d be leaping for joy if we lost a contract worth ten million…
