In the close-knit world of Hollywood, doing business with your enemies is inevitable. But an unlikely union was on display Thursday when Tom Cruise dined at a Beverly Hills hot spot with the person who toppled him from his A-list pedestal, Viacom Inc. Chairman Sumner Redstone, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Mr. Redstone severed Mr. Cruise’s long-running partnership with Viacom’s Paramount Pictures in 2006, blasting the actor’s sometimes odd public behavior for undermining the studio’s movies such as “Mission: Impossible III.” Paramount had been home to the star’s production company for 14 years, and before that made some of Mr. Cruise’s biggest hits, including “Top Gun.”
Messrs. Redstone and Cruise have barely exchanged a word since then.
At a lunch at the Beverly Hills Hotel, a venue chosen by Mr. Cruise, Mr. Redstone said they “agreed the past is the past and we would put it behind us and renew our relationship.”
A spokesman for Mr. Cruise declined to comment.
Mr. Redstone declined to elaborate on whether they discussed business. However, Mr. Cruise is widely thought to want to renew the “Mission: Impossible” series of movies, which Paramount has the rights to.
Mr. Redstone says Mr. Cruise “was happy I agreed to have lunch with him” and brought out pictures of his wife and daughter. Mr. Cruise thanked Mr. Redstone for a note he sent wishing him luck on his new venture just over a year ago, the Viacom chairman said. They agreed to get together for dinner at a later date, Mr. Redstone said.
After leaving Paramount, Mr. Cruise settled at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., where he and his producing partner, Paula Wagner, were given a mandate to resurrect the United Artists label.
Mr. Cruise has stumbled in his early solo efforts, however. His first project, “Lions for Lambs,” was a flop. The coming movie “Valkyrie,” in which he plays Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, a leader of a failed attempt to assassinate Hitler, has had mixed buzz after a trailer showed Mr. Cruise in full World War II regalia, portraying the character with an American accent.
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