Paramount studios announced today that they’ve severed ties with Tom Cruise after a 13 year relationship due to his “unacceptable” behavior. Strangely, Cruise’s agents claim that they terminated negotiations with Paramount after turning to a pair of hedge funds to finance Cruise’s future projects. Clearly, there’s more to this story: as my fiancee said, Tom Cruise could declare himself the spiritual leader of a small group of zebras and studios would still bank his movies if they believed in his money-making appeal. The real question is why would hedge funds want to get involved? Didn’t they see this?
A year ago, the Boston Globe wrote about how hedge funds are beginning to poach on venture firm’s traditional turf by financing early stage companies. I suppose a certain amount of “mission drift” is normal, but today’s move seems wacky.
WATCH what happens next. Paramount pictures will be slandered , redstone will be accused of doing something illegal or bad, possibly sumner will be sued or even paramount. When this does happen it will prove something that the world needs to know about. Something very dangerous and sick and evil. Just wait and see.
Left by real deal on August 23rd, 2006