Tom's production deal no longer in Cruise control

These terms will self-destruct in five seconds.

How long would you prefer any one trade to last?

Okay, there's a little more time involved than that but, as Tom Cruise's production contract with Paramount nears its eleventh hour, we now know that not even Jerry Maguire is safe once a studio has decided it wants to tighten its belt.

The deal that Cruise and longtime production partner Paula Wagner have had with Paramount Pictures, which currently pays them as much as $10 million a year to cover project development costs and other expenses, was set to expire Monday, the Los Angeles Times reported, and the studio's latest offer doesn't come close to matching those lucrative terms.

But that's okay, according to Wagner.

"We don't receive $10 million or $11 million a year," she told the Times. "We do not see anything near that. We, Cruise-Wagner, do not negotiate in the press. They have made what we would consider a generous offer."

Paramount, where Cruise and Wagner have been based since 1992, reportedly offered the duo $2 million and $500,000 a year for variable expenses for the next two years.

Bertram Fields, Cruise's attorney, said that his client is currently "digesting" those terms.

"We will sit and talk about it," Fields said. "It is not the case that they said this is a take-it-or-leave-it offer. I don't think my friends at Paramount would ever talk that way."

The current negotiations could go on for days or, possibly, weeks.

In this current Hollywood climate, though, where Mel Gibson's image is imploding in the court of public opinion and Lindsay Lohan is being publicly dissed for partying too hard, Cruise is looking pretty darn good.

While he may have alienated some of his fan base with his enthusiastic declarations of love and his Scientology-based medical philosophies over the past year and a half, the War of the Worlds star remains one of the most bankable actors out there.

But with great popularity comes great perks, however, and Paramount may only break even on the $381 million-grossing Mission: Impossible III because of Cruise's profit-sharing deal. The top Impossible Mission Force agent stands to collect close to $80 million from the film (which, while successful, didn't exactly meet box office expectations) when all is said and done.

And while Cruise is still a lucrative name to have on your marquee, his name on a film's credits alone doesn't have quite the same pull. Projects he and Wagner produced for Paramount such as Elizabethtown, Ask the Dust and Narc made nary a ripple at the box office.

Wagner pointed out that she and Cruise have also helped lure primo talent to Paramount over the years, including Mission: Impossible III director J.J. Abrams, who now has a multimillion-dollar deal with the studio.

"While it is important to us to make films that make money, we're also in the business of supporting the artistic vision of filmmakers," Wagner told the Times.

But now there's the possibility that Cruise may be taking his $80 million artistic vision elsewhere.