Submitted by: kirkland on Wednesday August 23rd, 2006 at 10:02 AM EST

You'd have to be living on another planet not have noticed Tom Cruise's kooky behavior this past year: that couch incident on Oprah, the ceaseless plugging of Scientology, his excessively professed love for Katie Holmes. To Cruise's detriment one person who has definitely noticed is Sumner Redstone, his boss at Viacom. He's now said that the company's movie arm, Paramount Pictures, is giving Tom the boot.

Redstone, 83, said in a newspaper interview that he was dropping Cruise and his production company Cruise/Wagner Productions, because his behavior and advocacy of personal causes had cost the film Mission: Impossible III $100 million to $150 million in ticket sales.

Now Cruise's company says it's planning to set up independently and will be financed by two as-yet-unnamed hedge funds. Wagner has been quoted in several press reports as saying that she and Cruise had chosen to break away from Paramount after negotiations with the studio collapsed a week and a half ago.

» Full story @ Forbes