Can you get canned for this?

Mission Impossible 3 has made over $393,162,011 worldwide so far with an estimated budget of $150,000,000 according to boxofficemojo and imdb. War of the Worlds made about $591,739,379 with a budget of about $132,000,000 according to the same two sources. Unless there has been some behind the scenes bruhaha the like of which would be seen on HBO's Entourage, it seems that Paramount dropping Cruise is some sort of bizare publicity stunt for either side. We all know Cruise has been a bit off-kilter as late, but for me personaly, as long as he keeps staring in quality films, I don't care about his habits. And it looks like Redstone is overreacting in some way considering that MI3, a Tom Cruise vehicle, made a tidy profit. Throughout the whole Cruise debacle I can't help but be reminded of Eddie Murphy's movie star character in the underappreaciated satire Bowfinger and his bizzare "religion".

And, most importantly: who gives a ****?

Is this post somewhat vague?

What does Tom Cruise have to do with the Jews?

Are you making a reference to Saturday Night Fever?

Will Hollywood start focusing on innovation instead of propaganda?

Can't people of all religions just come together and stop being crybabies?

Does displaying an image at the incorrect size on a webpage cause aliasing?

I say what's good for the Jews is good for the gander.

Hey! He looks a little like Jerry Maguire!

I guess it's appropriate to point your fingers and have breakdowns in the movies, just not out of them.

If Talladega Nights weren't still in theatres, I'd say this is the best comedy out there.

I agree with Mike. The move seems extraordinarily bizarre in itself, which is ironic considering that bizarre behaviour is what is being used as the excuse for firing Cruise. He's still a tremendous BO draw, despite his peccadilloes. His recent movies, as Mike pointed out, have been enormously successful. Perhaps Redstone is pre-emptively dropping Cruise to avoid what he feels is a future disaster with one of these ruinously expensive movies.

Perhaps instead, Cruise was planning to split from Paramount to go more independent, and the move is a publicity stunt to avoid looking like Paramount was dumped. It's all about the stock price.

Who knows what the real scenario is? It occurred to me that, since the contract was up and the deal had run its course anyway, Redstone may just have wanted to put some distance between Paramount and Cruise (especially after all the criticism Viacom took over the "South Park" "Trapped in the Closet" episode). If Cruise really has alienated a substantial segment of the public to the point where they don't want to buy whatever he's selling (and I don't know that that's true, either), then maybe Redstone felt he may as well get a little good publicity out of it by showing his disapproval of Cruise's "controversial" public behavior.

And the money issue isn't really about what his pictures grossed, but about how much Cruise/Wagner Productions was getting in overhead, and how much Cruise himself was getting versus what the studio was making.

Anne Thompson in the Hollywood Reporter explains:

"Remember, Redstone is a numbers man. After all the millions that he invested in building up the marquee global movie star brand "Tom Cruise," he was convinced that Cruise's offscreen behavior "effectuates creative suicide and costs the company revenue," he told the Journal. It seems clear that Redstone simply couldn't bear the fact that Cruise's self-destructive public conduct - most of which took place before "War of the Worlds" more than a year ago - had cost the studio untold millions in lost ticket sales while the movie star himself walked away with as much as $80 million from "M:I-3," leaving the studio with chump change. "