Cruise not a popularity contest winner

The power of TomKat, June 2006: Forbes magazine touts Cruise as the world's most powerful famous person.

The privacy of TomKat, July 2006: Some four months after her birth, Suri has yet to make her public debut, though an elite few can claim to have laid eyes on her.

The downsizing of TomKat, August 2006: Paramount Pictures decides not to renew its production deal with Cruise and producing partner Paula Wagner. Viacom head honcho Sumner Redstone tells the Wall Street Journal that Cruise's "recent conduct has not been acceptable to Paramount."

So, what's not to like? Nothing, according to Cruise's attorney, Bert Fields.

"What was his personal conduct?" Fields asked in an interview with the New York Post. "Jumping on a couch on Oprah Winfrey because he's in love with Katie Holmes? That really deserves the death penalty?

"Or speaking out against mood-altering drugs for children? That's a real reason for the [Viacom] shareholders to be deprived of billions of dollars?"

Perhaps not, but it does provide insight into how Cruise could have become less appealing in the eyes of the general public.

Meanwhile, Wagner has also spoken out in defense of her business crony (whom she likes, anyway), calling Redstone's remarks "graceless," "undignified," and "not businesslike."

"I ask, what is his real agenda? What is he trying to do? Is this how you treat artists?" Wagner raged to the Los Angeles Times. "If I were another actor or filmmaker, would I work at a studio that takes one of their greatest assets and publicly does this?"

Cruise has yet to speak up on his own behalf. However, Wagner stated that the producing partners would be just fine without Paramount and had already secured $100 million in independent financing from two hedge funds.

Even so, the question remains of what will happen to the projects Cruise/Wagner Productions had already developed for Paramount.

The producing partners had stockpiled a number of scripts for the studio, many as potential starring vehicles for Cruise. Negotiations over the projects could get tricky, given Paramount's relatively new conditions for pictures put into turn-around, including the requirement that the studio be fully reimbursed and receive coproduction rights.

According to Daily Variety, some of the most promising projects brought to Paramount by C/W include One Shot, a mystery about a homicide investigator; The War Magician, a true-life drama about a British magician who used illusions to mystify the Germans and protect British troops in North Africa; and The Few, a drama about American fighter pilots who fought for the British in World War II.

"We have not discussed what will happen with the projects," a C/W spokesperson told Daily Variety. "They all have separate contracts and agreements, and I'm sure they will be honored."