Tom Cruise Has Been Replaced By Angelina Jolie
Source: www.celebritymound.com
GONE are the days of Tom Cruise as action hero. The Scientologist - once the leading man in movies like “Top Gun,” “Days of Thunder” and “The Last Samurai” - has been replaced by Angelina Jolie as the star of Columbia Pictures’ spy thriller “Edwin A. Salt,” which will now need a new title, Variety reports.
And at 46, Cruise is thought to be too old and too expensive to star in the next “Mission Impossible” sequel. “Cruise is begging for ‘MI4,’ but Paramount wants a younger, cheaper guy,” a source told Page Six. “He had a tantrum and ran out of the meeting.”
So Cruise is turning to comedy to revive his career. He plays a fat, bald studio executive in “Tropic Thunder.” [See Lou Lumenick’s review on Page 61.] Co-star Ben Stiller told Elle that Cruise was gung-ho to join the cast: “Tom said, ‘I want to play the studio guy. I want to dance, and I want to have big hands.’ Tom was doing this little dance, and I was like, ‘This is insane. If this thing was on YouTube, it would be all over the world.’ ”
Cruise is also said to be attached to “Food Fight,” a comedy about a snooty New York chef forced to cook at a school cafeteria.
After his falling-out with Paramount boss Sumner Redstone two years ago, Cruise and his producing partner, Paula Wagner, took over United Artists, which bombed with the anti-war “Lions for Lambs.” UA’s “Valkyrie” - a $100 million drama about the attempted assassination of Adolf Hitler - is also said to be a turkey, having been postponed twice and now due out in February.
“It’s assumed the UA deal with Cruise and Wagner will be coming to an end,” said our source. “They haven’t greenlit a picture other than ‘Valkyrie’ and ‘Lions for Lambs.’ ”
UA production chief Jeff Kleeman has left after only 11 months, on the heels of marketing/publicity chief Dennis Rice, who left in July. UA is down to a skeleton crew and no rep could be reached.
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