When Viacom Inc. Chairman Sumner Redstone belittled Tom Cruise last week by publicly evicting him from his company's Paramount Pictures studio, the 83-year-old Los Angeles billionaire dealt a body blow to the world's largest talent agency.
Creative Artists Agency, which has long dominated the market on movie stars and represented the superstar for two decades, stands to lose as much money as the stars it represents if Redstone persuades other studios to act against what he called the unaffordable salaries of top actors -- part of his rationale for dismissing Cruise.
At the same time, the incident set the Hollywood rumor mill whirring with whispers that Cruise's fate was in part a result of the agency's missteps.
CAA President Richard Lovett quickly punched back, hurling a public insult at Paramount that was viewed in Hollywood as a veiled threat to use his gatekeeper role to hurt the legendary studio. Flouting a tradition by talent agents of playing Oz, Lovett stepped out from behind the curtain, telling the New York Times: "Paramount has no credibility right now. It is not clear who is running the studio and who is making the decisions."
Lovett's comments were an indirect swipe at the studio's chairman, Brad Grey, who had planned to allow Cruise's production deal to lapse quietly before being caught off-guard by Redstone's indelicate dismissal.
Such wars of words can leave lasting scars. Yet the mudslinging between Redstone and CAA may be largely a show for each side's power base. Their interdependence is underscored by the dozen movie projects involving CAA clients pending at Paramount.
The studio can ill afford to be feuding with CAA when it is only now getting back on track after a year of management turmoil and box-office disappointments. CAA represents some of Hollywood's biggest breadwinners, with a roster of more than 1,000 clients that includes Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Steven Spielberg, Jerry Bruckheimer, Tom Hanks, Will Smith and Brad Pitt.
What's more, it would be next to impossible today for any agency -- even one as powerful as CAA -- to boycott Paramount, which accounts for as much as 20% of the movie business. While CAA and its competitors are still flourishing, the riches aren't what they once were. Decades of mergers have concentrated moviemaking power among only six major studios, which make the majority of the world's filmed entertainment.
