7-18-08: Does Tom Cruise have an overestimated sense of self-worth? (Let’s pretend none of us saw that Scientology video, ‘kay?)
According to Fox News, which has always been dedicated to providing the most accurate news they can possibly fabricate, that may be the case. Apparently Tom’s return to potential greatness (don’t call it a “comeback”, he’s been here for years) in the spy thriller EDWIN A. SALT may be blowing away like spilled sodium chloride. Word is that Cruise still thinks his dollar value is in the A-list $20 million range, but the project’s producers may not feel the same.
Director Phillip Noyce (CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER) is still attached to the project, but it supposedly now needs a new leading man. Curiously, the movie was set up at Columbia rather than Cruise’s own company UA.
Over the past few years, Cruise’s drawing power has dwindled as his real-life public persona hovers somewhere between “a little creepy” and “completely and terrifyingly creepy” — his starring vehicle as a sympathetic German officer plotting to kill Hitler in VALKYRIE has been shoved all over the release schedule. Though undeniably talented, he just needs to take a few more risks (COLLATERAL worked wonders in my eyes, and TROPIC THUNDER reportedly does the same), and whatever pay cut might accompany it.