Tom Cruise’s ego must be pretty wounded. Wait, scratch that. If Tom was a regular guy and had a regular ego that was capable of being wounded, it probably would be right now. Luckily Tom’s entire psychological makeup is pretty far from the norm, and his ego, pride, and self-worth are all covered in a protective layer of hardened Xenu juice, making him impervious to even the most rational criticisms of others.

Tom was the star of all of the previous Mission Impossible films. His people recently approached Paramount to see if they wanted to start working on MI4. Their response? Thanks, but no thanks. But as a courtesy they did offer to let Tom can produce it – which he contractually has the rights to do anyway.

Paramount’s response was to ask whether Cruise would like to produce the film—as in, produce but not star in. And, since he’s contractually guaranteed the right to produce such a film at this point, it wasn’t much of an offer. This tells us not to read too much into that supposed rapprochement between Cruise and Sumner Redstone. And it suggests that the fighting between Cruise and Paramount studio chief Brad Grey over the deal for M:I3 was a lot more rancorous than we knew at the time.

We don’t want to keep you in suspense: Cruise’s answer was no. Our source tells us that Paramount met this with a shrug, since in the not-too-distant future the studio expects that it will be free, contractually, to make the movie without involving Cruise’s production company. Some film executives say they think Paramount is being foolish, because they believe there is an avid audience for Cruise in this role. After all, the last one grossed about $400 million worldwide. (Maybe M:I4 could pair Cruise with Shia LaBoeuf as the young successor.) But Paramount seems to think it could relaunch the franchise with a young star and leave Cruise out of the equation.

[From Slate]

Sucks for you, Tom Cruise. I don’t know why, but it makes me deliciously happy. I hope somewhere deep in his subconscious, Tom is keeping a list of all his epic fails.

Slate also noticed that United Artists – the film studio which Cruise now heads up – seems to have altered images of German hero Claus von Stauffenberg to make him look more like Tom Cruise. Tom plays von Stauffenberg in the upcoming film Valkyrie.

The first photo set is the side-by-side version that United Artists released. They look pretty similar, no?

This next set adds an AP photo of von Stauffenberg (left).

In the last photo, one of Slate’s designers overlaid the AP photo of von Stauffenberg with the version released by United Artists – then put THAT photo next to their photo of Tom Cruise.

Jim Festante, a Slate designer, wrote: “Look @ the nose, mouth, and chin. Definite (but slight) altering. Also, the head’s width is squeezed slightly.” And then designer Holly Allen added this: “To me, the nose looks different and definitely the eyebrows. Cheekbones and angle of the chin, too.” Finally, as a coup de grace, designer Jacob Berlow overlaid the AP photo of von Stauffenberg with the United Artists version. Looks like someone tweaked the photo.

[From Slate]

Looks like someone at United Artists must not be feeling so confident about Valkyrie if they went to so much effort to make Tom Cruise appear more legitimate.