Did someone say Sumner Redstone? That noise you hear must be the escalating thump thump thmup of my heart.
The story began on a sunny morning. The air was cool. A familiar face was walking the streets….a face hidden behind aviator shades. He was cool looking. An older Top Gun version of himself, only more mature and weathered by the hollywood storm.
Who is this man we are talking about? We came to love him in movies like A Few Good Men, and The Firm. The man’s name was Tom. Yes, the Tom with the famous grin. Tom Cruise. Box Office Breadwinner to the studios over in hollywoodland, where the magic of the movies came to life….where …
Enter Sumner Redstone.
The story gets better. Check it out…
From Showbiz 411 – It was just three and three quarter years ago that Sumner Redstone kicked Tom Cruise out of the Paramount nest. Cruise’s crime? Jumping on Oprah’s couch, picking a fight with Matt Lauer — acting, basically, nuts.
Redstone didn’t like that stuff. He ended Tom’s deal at Paramount, and pretty much sealed him off from another “Mission: Impossible.” Tom went to MGM, took over United Artists, and made the dreadful “Valkyrie” after the boring “Lions and Lambs.”
Now, as Cruise awaits release of “Knight and Day,” with Cameron Diaz, Redstone is a fan again. Maybe he’s seen an early cut of “Knight and Day” and really liked it. All I know is this: Cruise and Katie Holmes, mother of Suri, were seen once again dining with Redstone over the weekend. This time the setting was Il Piccolino on North Robertson.
“Since Tom no longer has Paula Wagner, he’s working out the details of the next “M:I” himself,” says a source. Oy vey. At least Cruise has a director this time, J.J. Abrams. Back when he wanted to make “M:I 3″ Cruise shopped around for a long time. He ordered up a trailer for that movie before it was even made, and held auditions at his house for the directors he had in mind.
So what are Tom and Sumner talking about on all these “dates”? They don’t have a lot in common. Redstone is Jewish, almost 87 years old and from Boston. His father, a nightclub owner, was a business associate of Barbara Walters’ father, Lou. Tom is a Catholic turned Scientologist, 47, and from an itinerant family that settled in Missouri. It’s unlikely Redstone’s interested in hearing about L. Ron Hubbard and space aliens. It’s equally doubtful that Tom wants to hear stories from Boston in the 1940s. If they’re sketching out the plot for “M:I 4,” someone had better tell Paramount’s Brad Grey.
A mending of fences between Tom Cruise and Paramount Studios who fired the action star in a high profile split.
Tom Cruise and Paramount have been at odds for 14 years, until today when the studio announced plans for a new collaboration, a fourth Mission Impossible film.
The bad blood broke out back in 1996, when Viacom CEO and Paramout owner Sumner Redstone fired Cruise for his odd behavior, severing a 14 year contract with world’s biggest movie star. The studio felt that Cruise’s personal life was overtaking the focus on his movies, especially in the case of Mission Impossible 3. Prior to that, Paramount had committed to pay up to $10 million to finance his production company, but ultimately decided they didn’t even want to do a slash-back deal.
While at Paramount, Cruise had produced several dozens blockbusters for a studio which began the actors career, releasing such hits as Taps and Days of Thunder.
The studio cited his oddball behavior in the press, which included jumping up and down on Oprah Winfrey’s couch while engaged to Kate Holmes, and proclamations about Scientology, as costs to the studio and reasons for his firing.
Following his break with Paramount, Cruise decided to self-finance his movies, and then find a studio to distribute them on a case by case basis.
But his last several films, Lions for Lambs, Tropic Thunder, and Valkyrie did not soar to the same heights as the $100 million plus blockbuster films that came while he was at Paramount which included Collateral, War of the World’s, The Last Samurai, The Firm and A Few Good Men.
Now Tom Cruise has joined Paramount again for a new Mission Impossible movie, and a picking up where the pieces left off, after the first Mission Impossible grossed nearly $400 million dollars.
Cruise certainly has put a lot of work into fixing his reputation following the infamous ‘jumping on Oprah’s couch’ incident.
While promoting his film Valkyrie he addressed the issues, and even reappeared on The Today Show, where he had once infamously criticized Brooke Shields for using over the counter medication to treat her post partum depression, and apologized for what he said. His regrets were well received by the press and signaled a new start perhaps from the intense, angry, crazy image of Tom Cruise that saw him plastered on magazine covers like New York magazine, with headlines that read “Celebrity Psychos: The Summer they All Went Mad.”
Perhaps Cruise and Paramount will become the power duo blockbuster film producing team that saw movies like War of the Worlds and The Firm storm the box office or perhaps Cruise will slip and up, and profess his love for Katie Holmes in an unabashed way.
RISKY BUSINESS – Tom Cruise films a special effects sequence on the set of “Hardy Men”, a movie adaptation of the Hardy Boys Series.
E!Online -Seems like just days ago Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz were in Spain filming the spy caper Knight and Day.
Oh, right. It was just days ago.
So imagine our surprise that a snazzy trailer is already up and running for the film, which doesn’t open until summer 2010.
And as teases go, this one’s pretty compelling. Playing a smooth, lethal secret agent, Cruise slathers on the loopy charm whether dispensing bad guys, sweet-talking a daffy Diaz or landing a jet in a cornfield. The trailer has the right mix of humor, intrigue and explosions to get us ready to order tickets now.SEE IT AFTER THE JUMP – [Wait!Theres Tons More…]
TMZ – Tom Cruise is being sued for allegedly hiring a notorious P.I. to illegally wiretap a magazine editor’s phone … according to documents obtained by TMZ.The plaintiff, Michael Davis Sapir, claims Cruise, attorney Bert Fields and jailed private investigator Anthony Pellicano conspired to spy on him. There is a long history between Cruise and Sapir. In 2001, Cruise sued Sapir for $100 million after Sapir claimed to have video evidence that Cruise “engaged in a homosexual relationship.” That lawsuit settled later that year. In the settlement, both parties issued a statement saying that no such tape existed.
In the latest suit, filed Friday in L.A. County Superior Court, Sapir claims Pellicano illegally wiretapped his phone during the time the 2001 lawsuit was active.Sapir claims in the suit that Cruise, Fields and Pellicano were all in cahoots.tom cruiseSapir is suing for $5 million, minimum.Bert Fields tells TMZ, “The allegations are absolute garbage. We did not even hire Pellicano to work on the Sapir case.”No immediate comment from Cruise’s rep. Pellicano is in the pokey.
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Valleywag – There’s a rumor circulating in the San Francisco press and real estate community: Tom Cruise just bought an $18 million mansion in town. An overgrown pied-à-terre wouldn’t be too terrifying — except for that local Scientology expansion drive.
Socketside heard Cruise was the buyer of an $18 million mansion in the ritzy Sea Cliff neighborhood. NBC Bay Area soon pointed out that, if that’s true, Cruise’s neighbors would be Robin Williams, Cheech Marin and the guitarist from Metallica. It’s like the Bay Area’s very own stunted little fog-swept Beverly Hills. But many locals will remember that the Church of Scientology was on the hunt for “apparent expansion” space starting in 2006, nosing around the once countercultural North Beach neighborhood.
So is Cruise, the alleged inspirer of Scientology beat-downs, spearheading a renewed expansion campaign by the cult to which he belongs?
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Rush & Malloy – Did Tom Cruise offer to personally “beat the living [bleep]” out of disobedient Scientologists?
Cruise’s lawyer and church spokesmen vigorously dispute the claim, but a former high-ranking Scientologist official says he “documented” that church leader David Miscavige once asserted that Cruise would lend his “Top Gun” muscle to do just that.
Marty Rathbun, once one of Miscavige’s most trusted lieutenants, tells us he has a witness who can corroborate his account of a bloody beating at the church’s 500-acre compound in Hemet, Calif. Furthermore, he’s brought it to the attention of Cruise’s attorney, Bert Fields.
On the day before the actor’s visit a couple of years ago, the compound’s managers took part in “the Tom Cruise arrival preparation drill,” which required “orchestrating every action they perform … in the presence of Cruise,” Rathbun recently wrote Fields.
But Miscavige wasn’t happy when he addressed 80 to 100 managers at a prisonlike facility, known as “The Hole,” where three insubordinate
officials — Marc Yager, Guillaume Leserve and Ray Mithoff — were “incarcerated,” according to Rathbun.
“Miscavige berated [the managers] for being far too light in their demands for confessions” from the three, Rathbun alleges in his letter, “because they refused to beat [them] … to pulps. Miscavige said that Tom … had vowed to come to the Hole and personally ‘beat the living [bleep]’ out of Yager, Leserve and Mithoff if the managers failed to do so themselves.
“In response, the mob rushed at the three targeted gentlemen,” Rathbun claimed. “Fists flew and feet kicked into the three. They continued to pound until … each had two black eyes.”
They want america to tell them they look adorable…
Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes went for a run at the Charles River. They took their son Connor with them. Tom, who’s 47 and Katie, who’s 32 wore a matching New Balance sneakers. Katie and Connor wore Nike tops and Tom wore Quicksilver shorts.
INF – Fresh off a plane from Australia where she has been filming her latest movie, there was no sign of jet-lag when we spotted Katie Holmes and hubby Tom Cruise out for an early morning jog in Boston today.Tom is in town for his new flick, Wichita, in which he stars alongside Cameron Diaz.It’s great to see celebrity couples keeping fit together.But Katie could have wore a more stylish running outfit.
