Earlier today, Elisabeth shared with you a Slate story that questioned whether United Artists photoshopped a picture of Claus von Stauffenberg so that it would look more like Tom Cruise when they were promoting the casting of the actor in Bryan Singer's Valkyrie. That post is over here. Read it. Love it. Investigate! In the same Slate story, however, they talk a bit about Mission Impossible 4. There's been rumblings recently of a new Mission Impossible -- how Cruise and Paramount's Sumner Redstone wined and dined one another -- leading many to believe they may patch things up and move forward on a sequel. Wonderful. Fabulous. Let's hold hands.

Not so fast. Slate says Paramount offered Cruise the chance to produce the sequel (they have to since it's in his contract), but not star in it. Not star? Cruise? No way. And that's exactly what happened: Cruise turned down their offer. Now, says Slate, Paramount may hold off on making a new Mission Impossible until their contract with Cruise's production company expires. This will then free them up to go out, cast some hot young stud as the new Ethan Hunt (or some other random Hunt-type dude), and continue along with a fairly popular action franchise.

But should they?

Though no one at Cruise/Wagner Productions was available for comment when Paramount announced they were dumping the duo -- at least in part because company partner Tom Cruise's "recent conduct has not been acceptable" -- they're talking now. And, not surprisingly, no one at C/W is very happy with how things went down. Paula Wagner herself characterized the above comment by Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone as "outrageous and disrespectful," while Cruise's agent (and Wagner's husband) Rick Nicita described Redstone's words as "shockingly offensive and graceless." Not only did she denounce Redstone's behavior, but Wagner went on the say that Cruise was in fact the one who broke off negotiations with Paramount last week. According to Wagner, she and Cruise have already "raised a revolving fund of $100 million from two hedge funds" to financing future projects. Also, his agents told the press that Cruise has already decided on his next starring role (What? Why has no one told us about this?), and is currently in negotiations with a studio home for the film.

Take that, Sumner.

Well, It's official: Paramount has ended a long-standing production deal with Tom Cruise. The 14-year-long relationship included the release and box-office success of films like Mission: Impossible, Top Gun and Days of Thunder, but a memo released today cited Cruise's recent public behavior as "unacceptable." Cruise's recent pronouncements -- about anti-depressant drugs, parenting and his enthusiastic embrace of Scientology -- have all led to negative press and public scrutiny. The subscription-only Wall Street Journal has the original story, including quotes from Viacom CEO Sumner Redstone like: "As much as we like him personally, we thought it was wrong to renew his deal." As Martha noted last month, the deal actually expired at the end of July, with negotiations apparently going on over the past 21 days. In the wake of Mel Gibson's recent role as tabloid-fodder, is big Hollywood trying to be pro-active, making sure star behavior doesn't affect the bottom line? Or is it just the economic realities of a fading star's trajectory? At this time, there was no formal response from Cruise or his producing partner Paula Wagner; we'll keep you posted with more about this story as it develops.