This will probably be my last Tom Cruise post for some time, but among all the noise over the last few days, I did find three well written pieces that I found insightful and enjoyable to read.
First, there's "How the players fared after the Cruise attack" by Anne Thompson in her Hollywood Reporter column:
But why did Redstone insist on kicking Cruise off the lot so publicly? Sounding angry and betrayed, there was something personal about his demeanor. 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.
Next, there's "Who is Redstone's Target?" by Patrick Goldstein of the LA Times:
In other words, Redstone appears frustrated and angry about something far more worrisome than one movie star's deal. To me, he seems equally upset about what's happened to his flagship investment — his movie studio. By all accounts, something is amiss at Paramount Pictures and I suspect that Redstone, at 83, doesn't have the luxury of waiting forever for his new vassals to figure out how to operate the keys to the kingdom.
What surprised people the most about Redstone's attack on Cruise was that it severely undercut the authority of his studio lieutenants. They had presumably been working out an amicable "we wish Tom well" send-off after 14 years at the studio that would have still signaled Paramount's tough stance on talent expenditures without insulting Cruise or his agency, CAA, which represents a huge percentage of the top talent in Hollywood. Furious with Redstone, CAA has gone on the attack, with the agency's rarely-heard-from President Richard Lovett saying that Paramount has "no credibility," telling the New York Times "it is not clear who is running the studio and who is making the decisions."
Finally, in a tangentially related story, (due to the rumors that Tom either is or isn't working with Wall Street hedge funds to set up his own production company), you may be asking, "what the heck is a hedge fund?" Claude Brodesser-Akner has a good piece titled, "$200 Million Bet A Hedge...Really" on TMZ.com (which is becoming quite the media magnet these days... where did these guys come from? or, where have I been?)
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