'I LOVE Paula Wagner, but she wants to produce elsewhere and in her own venue, and I don't intend to stand in her way. I'll say this of her leaving United Artists - whatever Paula wants is what I want her to have! And I hope we'll continue working together on future projects."

So spoke Tom Cruise on the phone with me this week. He added, cryptically: "I don't run United Artists; I just own it."

WHEN I asked Tom why he felt so many people in the business have gone after the Valkyrie" project as if it's a bad idea or something historically obscene, he sighed: "It just doesn't make sense to me either. The moment I read the screenplay I knew it was an important story, and as it's a true tale of heroic resistance to one of the great villains of history, I can't imagine that people won't want to see it."

Cruise's unflappably sanguine outlook has, of course, been what has helped propel him to superstar heights, and never will it be of greater service to him than in this highly transitional period in his career. Still, we'd have expected more from Cruise in his "don't ask me, I just sign the checks!"-attitude in addressing UA's failings. In Hollywood, where blame is flung around like fistfuls of chimpanzee crap on the set of Speed Racer, a clear and focused Alpha-superstar such as himself should be expected to step up and shoulder the blame for development misfires like Lions For Lambs 2: Armaggedon Reckoning.

• A NICE LITTLE CHAT WITH CRUISE [NY Post]

But, for whatever reasons—and Paula knows what they are—the much ballyhooed $500 million Merrill Lynch credit line went unspent, causing an increasingly nervous MGM chairman/UA remote-overlord Harry Sloan to enact a contingency coup that resulted, directly or indirectly, in a flurry of executive resignations culminating in Wagner's own. The once-moribund UA now returns to the comfortable, ghoststudio stasis in which it stagnates best. But what of the real issue now at hand—and by that we mean What This Means for Tom, and By Extension All of Hollywood, and By Further Extension Every Single One of Us?

Cruise's trajectory lately has been, for lack of a better metaphor, not unlike a Tori Spelling dinner party; it started out promising enough—some nice notices for his over-the-top, Scott Rudin-esque (whoever keeps comparing it to Sumner Redstone hasn't seen the movie) turn in Tropic Thunder—but ended with the actor seated squarely on the career crapper, surrounded by yes-men applauding his every movement. You know the beats: The curious case of Edwina A. Salt. The Scientology racketeering lawsuit. The whispers that he personally—personally!—pressed a pillow onto Isaac Hayes's face in his sleep when he found out the singer planned on donating none of his $750 Sunset Junction earnings to the Church.

Here's MGM's press release on the split, followed by Wagner's own statement:

"Paula Wagner, Chief Executive Officer of UA, has decided to leave her day-to-day responsibilities and return to her first love, which is producing films. As such, MGM and UA confirmed today that Ms. Wagner will transition to the role of a producer under her own independent production shingle and be attached to UA’s most exciting film properties. In November 2006, United Artists was reborn under a partnership formed between Tom Cruise, Ms. Wagner and MGM. Ms. Wagner will continue to be a part owner of UA and hold a significant stake in UA’s future success. Nothing will change in regard to Mr. Cruise’s involvement with UA and he continues to have a substantial ownership interest in the company. Furthermore, Mr. Cruise and Ms. Wagner will continue to work on film projects together.

“I’ve truly relished working with my longtime partner Tom Cruise to revitalize United Artists, and I am proud of all that we’ve accomplished in the past two years, reinvigorating the brand and developing such a strong slate of films. But I always tell my sons, ‘Follow your passion’ – and I’ve got to follow that advice myself. As much as I’ve enjoyed my time as an executive, I have longed to return to my true love, which is making movies, so that’s what I’ve decided to do. I still believe in our vision for UA, and I am confident that Harry Sloan and our colleagues at MGM will see that vision through to reality.”

• Disunited Artists: Who wins, who loses [THR]
• Tom Cruise's Movie Studio Imploding: Paula Wagner Is DOA At United Artists; But Was It Suicide or Murder By MGM? [Deadline Hollywood Daily]

As one source explained to me, the only future for UA was if "Paula calls it a day, or the company implodes on its own, or a gun is put to Wagner's head by financiers and she greenlights things and then trusts in luck..."

UA under Wagner was way behind on the timetable dictated by its financing, I'm told. "Paula wasn't greenlighting movies, so she was about to lose a lot of the money. Her camp is trying to say MGM screwed up. We didn't, she did. Now MGM can get UA moving on at least 2 movies, and make sure they're released by a certain date, to keep the financing intact."

That said, I hear Wagner wants to go back to producing movies, but this time around she'll do it on her own.

Sure, she could do that, but this seems a perfect opportunity to return to her first love: acting. That is, after all, how she got her start, before her frustrated agent sat her down and told her what she really had was the soul of a baby-gobbling negotiator. Perhaps pacing outside a fluorescent-lit casting office, nervously running through her Big Bang Theory audition dialogue for Woman At Starbucks #2, is exactly what she needs to rediscover what she loved about this unforgiving business in the first place.

• Tom Cruise's Movie Studio Imploding: Paula Wagner Is DOA At United Artists; But Was It Suicide or Murder By MGM? [Deadline Hollywood Daily]

Look at it this way: If you had $500 million of Wall Street's money waiting to be spent on a few Tom Cruise projects, or maybe on some of these comic-book adaptations we hear are doing OK these days, or even on an annual $30 million rom-com that will land snugly and profitably among the summer doldrums, how fast could you greenlight four to six projects a year? Finke's sources say Wagner herself is the "problem" — as in she, not Cruise, stands to lose the most from a third, fourth or fifth UA project facing the kind of backlash drawn by Lions For Lambs and Valkyrie (the first of which, it bears noting in fairness, actually made money). We sympathize, to a point, but at some point you've just got to pull the trigger — figuratively, of course. After last week's drama, if we heard a gunman was loose in the building, we'd probably give up, too.

[Photo Credit: Variety]

• Another Top Executive Exits United Artists [DHD]

Mr. Cruise, his partners at United Artists and the Valkyrie filmmakers are bracing for what will likely be a nine-month fight to prove their critics wrong. "We will not be daunted," Paula Wagner, chief executive of United Artists, said last week.

During a 90-minute interview at the company's headquarters in a Century City office tower, Ms. Wagner said she and her fellow executives were intent on overcoming negative reactions that she saw as rooted in ignorance of the process of building movie production companies.

"Anybody trying to dismiss us or write us off doesn't understand the business," Ms. Wagner said. She added: "Nothing is going to stop us. We are determined to make this work."

OK, we admit it: We don't understand the business. Like the second release-date shift out of Oscar season and into the dramatic dumping ground of February? That's apparently totally normal. That whole thing about Mary Parent showing up on the scene and reportedly getting a base salary of $5 to $6 million to remake MGM on her own, non-UA terms? Totally coincidental — nothing to do with UA's flailing! MGM chief Harry Sloan's vague defense of UA? A ringing endorsement! That public lunch date between Cruise and Sumner Redstone? Nothing to do with movies! Redstone probably just wanted recommendations for Suri's birthday gift — preferably an action franchise installment under $125 million.

Or maybe we understand the business just enough to know we've seen this before. To paraphrase Paul Sunday in There Will Be Blood, "We'd like it better if you didn't think we were stupid." It's not like we want to see UA fail, but come on. Even Roger Friedman can see this one coming.

• The Nazi Plot That's Haunting Tom Cruise and United Artists [NYT]

OK, here goes: she started out as an actress. After working in New York theater, Wagner moved to Los Angeles and hoped-for stardom, but had to settle for a few bit parts of television. Her agent, Susan Smith, had seen some of the best in the business (Sally Field, Kathleen Turner and Glenn Close) because of her acumen for spotting talent, and Smith quickly recognized that, as an actress, Wagner was only mediocre.

After a year of trying to jump-start Paula's career, Smith finally called Wagner into her office. "Go away over the weekend and think about what I say to you. You have three choices: either you must leave the agency because I don't know how to do it for you., or you have to go to regional theater and remember what acting is about again, or, and this is the one I recommend, you give up acting and let me train you to be an agent, because I think you could be terrific." As Smith talked, tears streamed down Wagner's face. That Monday, Wagner began her training as an agent.

That couldn't have been an easy day; no one with dreams of making their way in Hollywood in front of the camera wants an agent to summon her to the office, close the door gently behind her, and say, "Kid, let's face it—this acting thing ain't happening. That dream dies here. But you know what? You've got moxie, and I think you're one hell of a liar. How'd you like to spend your life making money from people doing a thing you'd like to do, but that you're no good at? No? Yeah, whatever. You start Monday, kid." But it's exactly moments like that in which future studio bosses are born.

• The 411 On Tom's Partner Paula Wagner [Deadline Hollywood Daily]
]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=212387&view=rss&microfeed=true While scouring the roughly sixteen thousand stories trailing Tom Cruise's unexpected, imminent return to gainful employment this morning, we noticed a lone voice rising from the desert of media analysis, repeatedly countering all the prematurely exuberant chatter about how the actor and producing enforcer Paula Wagner are ready to revive United Artists' legacy, usher in a new, talent-fellating Hollywood Golden Age with their studio gigs, and summon down from the heavens a deluge of investor cash. Not so fast, says our go-to Cruise contrarian:

"'Good for Tom — it's a great press release,' said media analyst Harold Vogel. 'But it's little beyond a press release and the revival of a moribund label that happened to be available.'" [LAT]

· "'The actors are not going to have a cakewalk,' said Harold Vogel, the author of 'Entertainment Industry Economics.' 'These investors don't say, "Oh, it's so glamorous to go to a party." They aren't that dumb. Instead they say, "You will get your money, but we get ours first."'" [NY Times]

· "'Does he still have it? That remains to be seen,' said veteran entertainment analyst Hal Vogel. 'This is not exactly a big studio, it's a moribund label,' Vogel added. 'Let's see what the projects are,' and how much financing they get." [NY Daily News]

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