Tom Cruise Gets Dumped........

No...not by Katie...but by Paramount Chairman Sumner Redstone.

Paramount has not renewed Tom Cruise's production deal.

Capping his spectacular reversal of fortune from Hollywood cash machine to public relations liability, Tom Cruise was unceremoniously dumped last night by Paramount Pictures after a 14-year business relationship.

Sumner Redstone, chairman of Viacom, which owns Paramount, told The Wall Street Journalthat the off-screen behaviour of Cruise, who angered many fans with his support of Scientology and criticism of psychiatry, was to blame. That and the disappointing box office opening for M.I.3.

In light of the fact that Cruise has made more money for Paramount than any other actor and that his behavior is no more disturbing than most of Hollywood's other well paid miscreants Nikke Fink, at Deadline Hollywood, ponders whose crazier - Sumner or Cruise?

(...)...it’s absurd for Redstone to make an issue of Cruise’s conduct like he has. My god, Sumner himself was openly shtupping one of his producer girlfriends on the lot for years, and his own son is suing him. And Redstone looked the other way when Les Moonves carried on a long adulterous affair with employee Julie Chen and then married her after dumping his wife in the process. Which are all violations of so many corporate codes of conduct that I don’t think I can count that high. And let’s not forget how the old guy’s studio is still in business with Robert Evans who not only was a hopeless cocaine addict and regular client of Heidi Fleiss’s prostitution call girl ring for years but pled the Fifth Amendment in connection with a murder rap no less. And let's not forget that Redstone didn't blink when Brad Grey's name surfaced in that Anthony Pellicano (the thug P.I.) mess. So lemme get this straight: Cruise’s jumping around on Oprah’s couch is worse?

Chris Ayres, the LA correspondant for the UK Times shares his insight:

Cruise cannot be happy about all of this.

Indeed, the actor's agent, Rick Nicita of Creative Artists Agency, told the Journal that the actor was "offended" by Redstone's comments. "This was done in an incredibly graceless way," he said. Graceless? This coming from a rep for Cruise, the man who went on NBC's Today show last summer to criticise Brooke Shields for using medicine to help her cope with postpartum depression?

Like I wrote in my open letter to Tom Cruise last summer. he better than anyone should understand that even when you've got "All The Right Moves" Hollywood is still a Risky Business.