Tom Cruise and PaulaWagner's Cruise/Wagner Productions is leaving Viacom's Paramount Pictures after13 years at the studio.

The news was the talk ofHollywood yesterday (Tuesday) after the publication of a Wall Street Journalinterview with Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone in which Redstone said "As muchas we like [Cruise] personally, we thought it was wrong to renew his deal. Hisrecent conduct has not been acceptable to Paramount."

Wagner immediately repliedto Redstone's comments with a statement issued by CAA and an interview with TheAssociated Press in which she said that she and Cruise had had virtually nodealings with Redstone and that C/W had stopped negotiating with Paramount lastweek and subsequently secured independent financing worth $100m from twoseparate hedge funds.

The C/W relationship withParamount had been cemented under the Sherry Lansing/Jonathan Dolgen regimeand, since Brad Grey took over, it had been the subject of much speculation.One of Grey's first achievements upon taking the reins at the studio was togreenlight C/W's Mission: Impossible 3 with a reduced budget figure.

In its years at Paramount,C/W had produced several Cruise-starring tentpoles including the Mission:Impossible series, War Of TheWorlds and Vanilla Sky as well as smaller titles like Elizabethtown, SuspectZero, Ask The Dust and Narc.