Viacom's Rationale: Cruise Is Risky Business

In Hollywood, It's Okay to Be . . . Whatever. That Is, Unless You Start Costing Someone Money

Washington Post/August 24, 2006
By William Booth and Anita Huslin

Los Angeles -- In Hollywood, when a huge movie star and his studio break up, they almost always promise to remain friends forever. There is a fog of meaningless sweet nothings about how each wishes the other nothing but the best -- and often a suitcase of make-nice go-away money.

Then there is the Cruise crackup, which is remarkably and publicly nasty -- in a town where mortal enemies smile and air-kiss on the red carpet. Graceless, shocking, offensive! That's how Cruise's agent, Rick Nicita of the powerhouse agency CAA, put it to the Los Angeles Times. Normally, agents do not even like being quoted in the Los Angeles Times, and when they are, they certainly don't call studio bosses names .

As anyone above the Earth's surface knows by now, Viacom Chairman Sumner Redstone announced via the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday that his movie studio, Paramount Pictures, was severing its ties with Tom Cruise and his production company after 14 years and $2.5 billion in gross receipts.

"It's nothing to do with his acting ability, he's a terrific actor," the 83-year-old billionaire said. "But we don't think that someone who effectuates creative suicide and costs the company revenue should be on the lot."

Effectuated and costly suicide? Ouch.

The split was not completely unexpected. Tom Cruise costs a lot of money and Tom Cruise makes a lot of money. He is arguably still the reigning male action star in America. His last seven pictures each grossed more than $100 million at the domestic box office, but he reportedly takes home 20 percent of the ticket receipts. So reaching a financial impasse -- it is show business -- would be reasonable.

But why so public? Surely not just for the public's entertainment. It was the way it was done that has Hollywood staring, slack-jawed. Peter Guber, chairman of Mandalay Entertainment Group and co-host of AMC's "Sunday Morning Shootout" says Redstone "is one very smart business person. He does nothing by accident. This is a very calculated decision."

Normally, Guber says, a parting of the ways between Cruise and studio would have been placed in Variety by Paramount chief Brad Grey "saying we were unable to come to satisfactory terms but we wish Tom well, blah, blah, blah, and Tom would have said how they'd shared this great relationship, blah, blah, blah." You know the drill. But no, the split is announced by Redstone, who calls into question Cruise's sanity on the front page of the nation's premier financial newspaper -- while Cruise's production company is reportedly securing funding by Wall Street hedge funds.

"The methodology is the mystery," says Guber, who only half-kiddingly wondered whether there might be some secret da Vinci coded message in the way the parties uncoupled.

Cruise and his producer partner, Paula Wagner, had been in negotiation with Paramount for months. Cruise's company had a $10 million-a-year deal with Paramount to develop projects, a deal that is generous, according to Hollywood executives.

But a Viacom executive with knowledge of the split who would not speak for attribution explained that the breakup was not so much about the $10 million -- "we could afford him" -- but about Cruise's behavior -- all of it, the bouncing on Oprah, the yelling at Brooke Shields, the lecturing of Matt Lauer. "His recent conduct has not been acceptable to Paramount," Redstone told the Journal.

Though Cruise has been a Scientologist since 1990, when he was introduced to it by his first wife, Mimi Rogers, he has risen in recent years to the upper echelons of the organization to become a kind of world ambassador for the religion. Eyebrows began wagging as he explained how he helped wean addicts from drugs by promoting vitamins and when he set up tents with Scientology information on the set of "War of the Worlds."

Then came the TomKat union. Within months of meeting actress Katie Holmes, 16 years his junior, Cruise trampolined on Oprah's couch and declared his love for her. Then Cruise let loose on actress Brooke Shields for using antidepressants to treat her postpartum depression, and followed up with a rant at Matt Lauer on the "Today" show, chastising the host for promoting Ritalin and not understanding the evils of psychiatry. (No. 2 Cruise ex Nicole Kidman, whose father is a psychologist, maintained a pained silence through all.)

Cruise also challenged the rebroadcast of the "South Park" episode "Trapped in the Closet," which satirized Scientology. Then in April, he announced to the world the birth of his and Kate's first child, daughter Suri, who was reportedly birthed in silence as prescribed by the Church of Scientology.

The Cruise split from Paramount comes at a time when the multinational media companies that own the Hollywood studios are rebelling against the big salaries and percentages paid to movie stars. Redstone complained that while he thought Cruise's recent "Mission: Impossible III" was the best in the franchise, he says Cruise's antics cost the film $100 million to $150 million at the box office. The movie took in $393 million worldwide. "The film was not a bomb, but it is true that it was a big step down from the last one," the second "Mission: Impossible," which earned $545 million six years ago, says Brandon Gray, founder of Boxofficemojo, a Web site that tracks film receipts. While $393 million sounds like a big box office success, the third "Mission: Impossible" reportedly cost $250 million to make and market, the movie theaters get half of the box office, and Cruise takes his cut.

"So it's possible that the movie was in the negative," Gray says, though DVD sales are now where most of the profits are (Cruise gets a percentage of that, too).

Did Cruise's behavior hurt the box office? Gray's guess: "I think there were other factors. There were six years between the second and third movie. No one really remembered the earlier ones. No one was really clamoring for a third. I think that hurt more than his off-screen antics."

"Is Tom Cruise over? No. Not at all. But the way it happened is very telling," says Joe Dolce, editor in chief of the celebrity weekly Star, which tracks all things TomKat. Dolce says that his readers, who are mostly women, are not that interested in the 44-year-old Tom Cruise, but are fascinated by his relationship with Holmes. "And what is she thinking now?" Dolce wonders. "Here she becomes engaged to this man who can help her career and he is essentially fired and she must be wondering if he is going off the deep end."

Dolce sees this in rather mythological terms. The stars possess within themselves the tools of their own undoing. Mel Gibson. Tom Cruise. "They're masters of their own universes and they think they can do anything they want and the audience will accept and forgive and forget. But they don't. They couldn't pull girls in to see 'Mission: Impossible III.' "

Richard Roeper, co-host of the "Ebert and Roeper" movie review TV show, sees it as a black or red proposition. "If Hollywood is taking a stance against anything, it's against these wildly favorable deals for stars where they get $20 million, and 20 percent against the back end" of the box office receipts, Roeper says. "If Hollywood is going to all of a sudden take some sort of principled stand, it's going to be about money. That's the stand they'll take."

Huslin reported from Washington.