Cruise’s star will shine on, insiders say

LOS ANGELES – While the messy divorce between Tom Cruise and Paramount Pictures probably won’t put a big dent in Cruise’s career, industry insiders say, it still points to a sea change in a company town that tolerated celebrity misdeeds as long as they didn’t hurt the bottom line.

The 14-year relationship between Cruise’s production company and Paramount exploded Tuesday after Sumner Redstone, chairman of Paramount parent Viacom Inc., said Cruise’s recent behavior, such as jumping on Oprah Winfrey’s couch and aggressively advocating Scientology, was “creative suicide.” Redstone said such displays cost the studio up to $150 million in lost ticket sales for Cruise’s last film, “Mission: Impossible III.”

Redstone may have been basing some of his reaction on the fact that negative public perception of Cruise has soared in the past six months in the closely watched Q Scores, which rate celebrity popularity. They indicate that negative perception of Cruise jumped nearly 100 percent since mid-2005, while positive perception fell about 40 percent.

“He’s definitely at his low point in terms of consumer appeal, among both males and females,” said Henry Schafer, executive vice president of Marketing Evaluations Inc., the Q Scores company.

Whether that means moviegoers are spurning his films is a different matter, says film producer Peter Guber, who has worked with Cruise in such movies as “Rain Man” and a “A Few Good Men.”

“One would have to believe he will remain luminous in the near term,” said Guber, chairman of Mandalay Entertainment Group and host of AMC’s “Sunday Morning Shoot-out.”

“He didn’t go out and kill somebody. He didn’t drive drunk. He didn’t beat up his wife,” Guber said. “I think he will remain a top star in the business and command a great deal of attention and bring in a great deal of revenue.”

The acrimonious split comes at a time when studios are slashing costs, especially the kind of huge paychecks that stars such as Cruise have commanded, even for production deals. Paramount was reportedly paying his company, Cruise/Wagner Productions, $10 million a year to develop new projects.

Still, Cruise will likely continue to star in films for Paramount, even as his company vacates the Paramount lot and raises private financing. Cruise/Wagner has several films in development at Paramount as well as other studios.

Cruise himself was never under contract to Paramount as an actor and has appeared in films for other studios over the years, including “The Last Samurai” for Warner Bros. in 2003.

Wednesday, Cruise’s representatives said the star had told Paramount weeks ago that he would not renew his Paramount deal.

“Paramount made a firm offer for a new term of years,” said his attorney Bertram Fields. That offer was for far less than what Cruise/Wagner had been receiving to pay for overhead and development costs, Fields confirmed. But he said Cruise had told Paramount he was more interested in starring in films going forward rather than producing them and needed less money to renew.

Fields said he and other advisers recommended Cruise and his partner, Paula Wagner, reject the offer because of a change in attitude among Paramount executives toward the pair.

Paramount spokesman Carl Folta declined to comment Wednesday.

Wagner said Tuesday that her company has secured independent financing from two hedge funds.

Studios, seeing profits shrink as box office flattens and DVD sales decline, are trying to dump the long-held economic system in Hollywood that led to stars earning paychecks north of $20 million.

“Studios see things are slowing down and they can no longer afford to make big movies” and agree to lucrative deals for actors where, in some cases, “the star makes more than the studio at the end of the day,” said media analyst Harold Vogel.

“Mission: Impossible III” made $393 million in worldwide ticket sales and is sure to be a big seller on DVD. But it made less money than the first two films of the series, despite general agreement that it was the best of the trio.

“I do think the film underperformed in the domestic market considering this was the best of all ‘Mission: Impossibles,’ ” Guber said. “But to say that’s a reason to pull the plug on the whole relationship does strain some credibility.”