Tom Cruise cut a limited financing deal Monday with a group of investors who include the owner of the Washington Redskins and a former top executive of Walt Disney Co.'s ESPN channel, allowing Hollywood's most bankable star to move his production company off the Paramount Pictures lot after 14 years.
The new deal is a fraction of the production contract Cruise currently receives from Paramount, underscoring the star's declining popularity at the box office. The investor group would provide Cruise with $2 million to $3 million a year to cover the overhead of his movie production company, according to a source familiar with the deal. Terms of the new deal were not disclosed Monday.
Cruise's new investors are Daniel M. Snyder, owner of the Redskins and chairman of theme park operator Six Flags Inc.; former ESPN programming chief Mark Shapiro, who now runs Six Flags; and real estate magnate Dwight Schar, a Six Flags director.
Cruise and his producing partner, Paula Wagner, must still find financing to make the movies they develop and a studio to distribute them.
"What drew us to them was their great track record," said Shapiro, who will oversee the investment. He emphasized that the deal would not involve Six Flags in any way.
"I've got a company to turn around here," said Shapiro, referring to Six Flags, which has struggled with $2 billion in debt and a sagging stock price. "Dan has a Super Bowl to win."
Paramount has been paying Cruise and Wagner a reported $10 million annually to cover the overhead of their production company, which has released films that Cruise has starred in, such as "War of the Worlds" and the "Mission: Impossible" series, as well as "The Others," with the star's former wife Nicole Kidman, and "Ask the Dust," with Salma Hayek and Colin Farrell.
Paramount Pictures had offered to renew the production contract with Cruise at a lower rate of about $2 million a year, but the actor balked. Although Cruise's deal with Paramount expired July 31, the studio had extended it for another month to give Cruise more time to line up alternative financing.
Before the deadline, however, Sumner Redstone, chairman of Paramount's owner Viacom Inc., publicly dismissed Cruise last week, calling the star's erratic off-screen behavior "inappropriate" and his salary out of whack in an industry struggling to make money.
