Originally Posted by Zap2it.com

Paramount Pictures is severing its lucrative 14-year relationship with Tom Cruise, whose recent off-screen behavior proved to be too much for Viacom Inc. Chairman Sumner Redstone, who disclosed the superstar's termination Tuesday.

"His recent conduct has not been acceptable to Paramount," Redstone said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. Paramount is Viacom's moviemaking arm.

The unceremonious dismissal of one of Hollywood's highest-paid stars stunned the entertainment industry, with agents and movie executives privately questioning whether talent relations had sunk to a new low.

Redstone's remarks are a sign of the mounting tensions between the major studios and their high-priced talent as movie costs soar.

Neither Cruise nor his lawyer, Bertram Fields, could be reached for comment. Cruise's producing partner, Paula Wagner, hit back at Redstone .

"It is graceless. It is undignified. It's not businesslike," she said. "I ask, what is his real agenda? What is he trying to do? Is this how you treat artists? If I were another actor or filmmaker, would I work at a studio that takes one of their greatest assets and publicly does this?"

Wagner put a different spin on the split, saying she and Cruise decided to go in a different direction after negotiations with Paramount on a new contract collapsed a week and a half ago. Since then, she said, she and Cruise have secured outside funding to establish an independent production company. She declined to provide specifics.

Wagner noted that Cruise had made more money for Paramount than any other actor has made for any other studio in history. His last seven films have grossed more than $100 million each in the U.S., she said.

For more than a year, Cruise's public outbursts have made headlines and sparked speculation that one of Hollywood's most bankable figures might be tarnishing his image.

In a series of unrelated incidents, Cruise publicly denounced Brooke Shields last year for taking antidepressants, jumped up and down on a couch during "The Oprah Winfrey Show" and proclaimed his love for fiancee Katie Holmes, and jabbed an accusing finger at Matt Lauer on the "Today" show as he lectured his host on the evils of Ritalin, a stimulant used to treat attention deficit disorder.

At the same time, Cruise's increasingly vocal advocacy of Scientology has drawn attention to his faith — at times colliding with his career.

"His religion has become very important in his life, to the point that it may overshadow his career," said a person close to the situation.

The 84-year-old patriarch(Redstone), who built the nation's third-largest entertainment giant from a small chain of drive-in theaters he inherited from his father, has told people that Paramount would have made more money on "Mission: Impossible III" if not for the actor's off-screen behavior.

Redstone estimated that Cruise's conduct had cost the studio between $100 million and $150 million in box-office receipts, said one person close to the Viacom chairman. Redstone declined to elaborate on his remarks Tuesday.

While promoting "War of the Worlds" last year, Cruise butted heads with the film's director, Steven Spielberg, who took issue with how little the actor talked about the movie and how much he talked about Scientology and his love for Holmes.

During the filming of "War of the Worlds," the star asked to have information tents set up from the Church of Scientology. Holmes' pregnancy was marked by reports of Scientology minders who guarded over her. The birth in April of the couple's daughter, Suri, attracted global fascination when the once very-public pair all but disappeared from view. Photographs of the child have yet to be made public.

And Cruise is not the only star for whom the kid gloves have come off recently.

At the end of July, actress Lindsay Lohan received a stern letter, which was leaked to the press, from Morgan Creek Productions head James G. Robinson, who told her she had "acted like a spoiled child" and that he saw through her alibis of illness and fatigue for absences that have hampered the filming of the movie "Georgia Rule."

At about the same time, actor Mel Gibson's anti-Semitic outburst following an arrest for drunk driving prompted Sony Pictures head Amy Pascal to publicly condemn his behavior as irresponsible.