Tom Cruise is free from studio system
From Anne Thompson

LOS ANGELES—Take all the PR spin out of last week’s announcement that Tom Cruise and his producing partner Paula Wagner are reviving the United Artists studio, and what’s left?
Standing to gain from the deal are UA’s MGM parent, which aspires to return to full studio status; Cruise, whose star has become slightly tarnished; Wagner, who ascends to executive status; and Creative Artists Agency, which represents both Cruise and Wagner. And, as a bonus, the film industry gets a much-needed new buyer. What’s not to like?
But the bottom line: It remains to be seen whether Cruise and Wagner can produce a slate of commercial movies that MGM can release effectively.
While MGM boasts a legendary brand name, it is still an independent distributor trying to climb into contention as an international studio by adding a global movie star to its stable. After a year as MGM CEO, hard-boiled businessman Harry Sloan has seen what a tough slog it is to release movies in a ruthlessly competitive marketplace.
While it is by no means clear that Sloan’s innovative bare-bones new studio paradigm will grow into a raging success, adding an international megastar to the equation will certainly make Sloan’s overseas partners happy — as long as Cruise stars in some of the movies. “UA will supply a steady flow of product for our worldwide distribution structure,” MGM chief operating officer Rick Sands says. “We believe these talented people can create four commercial movies a year.” Word is, the announcement of the first UA movie next week will be a big-budget actioner starring Cruise.
With the announcement of the UA takeover, Cruise took yet another step in his painstaking recovery from the PR missteps that led to his public dismissal from his $10 million-a-year studio deal at Paramount Pictures this summer. No matter what happens, Cruise’s name is now linked forever to the founders of the legendary United Artists of movie lore —Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith. “We’re looking to re-establish what UA represents: a studio founded by artists to control their own destiny,” Wagner says.
Which is not to say that Cruise is running a studio — at this stage, UA has been revived as a label, at best — or that his creative acumen will guarantee MGM a slate of robustly commercial pictures. Nor is Cruise, who is free to make movies anywhere, “committed” to starring in any UA pictures, though he is certainly expected to do so, his attorney Bert Fields points out. The heavy lifting at UA will be done by Wagner, his partner of 14 years, and their CAA agents.
Cruise, 44, now has an opportunity to break free from the strictures of the studio system that have bound him for his entire career. While Cruise and Wagner have demonstrated excellent taste in their productions — outside the “Mission” series, they co-produced Edward Zwick’s “The Last Samurai,” and oversaw Nicole Kidman’s “The Others” — they have not demonstrated infallible marketplace instincts.
They have picked terrific directors slightly off the beaten path such as John Woo and J.J. Abrams to helm the “Mission” movies, and also have taken risks with filmmakers such as Cameron Crowe. (Both of Crowe’s films, “Vanilla Sky” and “Elizabethtown,” were adventurous films that might have turned out better divorced.