Hollywood and in particular, Paramount, has had enough. It takes a lot for Hollywood to castigate a wayward star so why, in Cruise’s case?

The thing was that Cruise combined a number of distinct negatives which finally tipped the balance over what were perceived as waning positives.

Shifting away from movies to sport for one moment, the great rugby star David Campese, known just as much for his mouth as for his truly breathtaking onfield style, once said:

"It’s OK to be a big mouth, as long as you can back it up on the field."

This is what Tom Cruise has failed to appreciate. Fine, espouse Scientology ad nauseam. Fine, speak of eating your wife’s placenta. Fine, hide your baby from the world. Fine, bounce up and down on a couch like a little boy. And even then you can still be taken seriously in Hollywood.

But once your latest film makes less at the box office, the vultures will swoop. Cruise simply failed to see that his skill as an actor has been overcome by a mocking media crusade against him [Tom Cat they call him] and while this can sometimes help you in a bizarre way [don’t mess with the Hoff], in Cruise’s case, it didn’t.

People started seeing him as a dork.

Viacom Inc Chairman Sumner Redstone's rebuke of Cruise was more a sign that a great money-making career was on the wane. Few actors besides Cruise have been held in such high regard in Hollywood. But his last film, Mission: Impossible III, while raking in close to $US400 million worldwide, did not do as well as hoped. And in Hollywood, you are often only as good as your last picture.

Redstone said a key reason Viacom's film studio, Paramount Pictures, did not renew its deal with the actor was his off-screen behaviour. Redstone told the Wall Street Journal: "He's a terrific actor. But we don't think someone who effectuates creative suicide and costs the company revenue should be on the lot."

To some, Redstone's comments signal a major change in Hollywood.

"There is a definitive, palpable change in climate," one source at a major Hollywood talent agency said.

"Stars' demands have gotten so over-the-top, and they've gotten so petulant. And the studios, because they're part of publicly traded companies, have to maintain quarterly results, and are less intimidated by the stars," he said.

A high-ranking studio executive who declined to be named said, "I think we're more willing to say 'no' now. ... We're finding the more we pay, the less our profit margin is and the less people appreciate the risk that we're taking."

Hollywood producer Jerry Bruckheimer, whose credits include the Disney blockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, agreed that the demand for talent had become a kind of buyer's market.

"I think the studios are certainly being much more conscious of the bottom line, and they're being much more careful on how they structure their gross deals," he told Reuters. "They just are tightening the screws as far as what's good business for them and the (movie) community."

Nevertheless, the biggest stars, like Cruise and Tom Hanks, remain in demand, Bruckheimer said. "If you want Tom Hanks for a picture, he's got a price. You either want him for the picture and pay his price, or you go to somebody else," he said, adding that mid-level performers are the ones who get squeezed.

In one high-profile example of Hollywood executives losing patience with their stars, the head of a major film production company sent a letter to actress Lindsay Lohan saying she was acting like "a spoiled child" on the set of Georgia Rules.

With Cruise gone, Viacom could sign younger stars at a cheaper rate. The crucial thing was that Mission: Impossible III did significantly worse than the first two films in the series. I think Paramount judged that as a sign of Cruise's waning appeal.

Reuters and other sources