Paula Wagner Cruising Out of UA

Reports that longtime Tom Cruise producing partner Paula Wagner is in talks with corporate parent MGM to depart the UA production arm they started with great fanfare in 2005 set Hollywood abuzz today, and by late afternoon Wagner, who began a cruise's agent at the start of his carer, had issued a statement with the usual formalities and tributes.

You couldn't call the events surrounding Cruise a perfect storm-the onetime leading man of all the industry's leading men is still too nimble to be consigned to an unforgiving culture's scrap heap. But it certainly amounts to a tropical depression, one that's swirled around Cruise, Wagner and his longtime CAA agent Rick Nicita-who's putting in his last day at the firm tomorrow as he makes the move to run independent production company Morgan Creek.

The much ballyhooed 2006 arrival at the historic, but dormant label included the granting of a nearly one-third stake in it to Cruise and Wagner. Wagner soon engineered $500 million in funding with Merrill Lynch to make the mini-major's first 20 or so films.

What followed wasn't promising, as UA's Lions For Lambs made back less than half of its $35 million budget despite Cruise starring in it, and the subsequent film, Valkyrie, has been dogged by adverse rumors and talk of reshoots.  To add to the day's curiosities, MGM announced in the late afternoon that the projected release date for Valkyrie has been moved to this December 26th.

Green lights for other planned projects have not been forthcoming, although Cruise and Wagner left Paramount, after a noisy falling-out with Sumner Redstone, with a considerable dossier of prospective films to make.  Insiders say there has been considerable sparring between the producing duo and MGM chief Harry Sloan over the war chest, which is dependent on projects getting underway in timely fashion. Another untoward sign came when UA execs Dennis Rice and  Jeff Kleeman departed recently, leaving the executive ranks thin.  (Although Mary Parent was brought in as the new MGM sheriff in charge of production, which some theorize further undermined Wagner's stature).

A Wall Street Journal report said the pair would retain some ownership of UA and that Wagner will continue producing films both on her own and with the label.

Cruise's enjoyably outlandish turn in Tropic Thunder as a obscenity-spewing exec indulging in an array of bad dance moves has brought comparisons to his nemesis, Redstone, and speculation that that role is the first plank in a career re-think.

Even as the news re Wagner was arriving, the star had dropped out of Edwin A. Salt, to be replaced by Angelina Jolie, and just today was said to be circling a remake of the 2005 French thriller Anthony Zimmer for Spyglass Entertainment.

The Zimmer development was more a possibility than a sure bet, and near day's end seemed only to add to the uncertainty surrounding what had been one of Hollywood's most potent talent franchises.