Tom Cruise: Is the comeback for real?

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If you want to send a message in Hollywood, you don’t bother with a mass e-mail -- you use Variety. The gist of the message, in a story in today’s Variety that might as well have been on CAA’s stationery, is: Tom is back! The headline of the piece, by veteran reporter Michael Fleming, says it all: ‘Studios Line Up to Court Tom Cruise.’ After giving a big wet kiss to CAA (‘With his career now steered by a team headed by CAA’s Kevin Huvane, Cruise has been more proactive and aggressive than in past years about meeting studio execs ...’), the story boasts that there are ‘at least five suitors’ trying to woo Cruise for his next film.

As Variety helpfully put it, the ‘concerted courtship’ is a sign that ‘Cruise has changed things. And execs have said their enthusiasm for the actor returned after ‘Valkyrie’ did better than expected around the world, and that no major star except Will Smith tubthumps a movie as hard as Cruise.’

Of course, as one executive put it this morning, puzzling over the subtext of the story: ‘What’s the point of saying you’re circling five movies when it’s pretty obvious that you can only do one?’ In fact, just last week, Variety ran a story saying that Cruise ‘was getting ready to partner’ with Denzel Washington in ‘The Matarese Circle,’ a David Cronenberg-directed adaptation of a Robert Ludlum thriller, for MGM. Variety made it sound like the project was on a fast track to go into production at MGM later this year -- but today’s story makes it appear that ‘Matarese’ is simply one of the top contenders -- and still needs a Cronenberg rewrite before moving ahead.

So why the emphasis on five movies, instead of just one? It’s a tried ‘n’ true tactic to drum up business, since there is no better way to spur interest in an actor than by having a bunch of super-competitive studio executives believe that all their arch-rivals are lining up to sign the actor first. So Variety goes to great lengths to detail all five projects that -- in Varietyese -- Cruise is either ‘circling’ or ‘flirting with.’

Along with ‘Matarese,’ possible Cruise choices include ‘The Tourist’ (a Spyglass-financed remake of a French thriller, which would costar Charlize Theron) and ‘Motorcade,’ a DreamWorks thriller pitting a U.S. president against terrorists who commandeer his motorcade in Los Angeles. Cruise is also interested in ‘Lost for Words,’ a Working Title romantic comedy in which he’d play an actor in a love triangle with a beautiful Chinese director (played by Ziyi Zhang) and the filmmaker’s jealous translator. Variety also has him ‘exploring’ a 20th Century Fox comedy in which he’d play an undercover agent thrown together with a woman who has man trouble -- though ‘exploring’ a project is surely less tangible than ‘circling’ one.

So what does this all mean? First off, CAA isn’t run by dummies. It wants to send a message that Cruise, having done a credible job of opening ‘Valkyrie’ over the holidays, is a viable commodity again. ‘Valkyrie’ didn’t exactly blow the doors off theaters, but considering the stink that accompanied the picture -- meaning the thousands of stories and blog posts about the movie being an unreleasable mess -- it actually performed respectably, especially for a Nazi war film at Christmas. UA had to overspend to open the picture -- with most experts saying the studio shelled out $60 million in marketing expenses -- but it ended up doing $150 million around the world. Considering what it cost, that sounds like a break-even proposition. But in terms of Hollywood perception, by working diligently to open a questionable commercial proposition, Cruise successfully put his wacky escapades behind him.

It’s also telling that the projects under consideration are all safe bets, groupable under two of the most commercial genres in the business: gripping thrillers and romantic comedies. Cruise is clearly bent on reestablishing his box office credentials, which had been tarnished by the disastrous ‘Lions for Lambs,’ a film that fell into the least commercial genre of all: earnest political polemic. It’s also intriguing to note that these projects would team Cruise -- a star accustomed to working with giants like Steven Spielberg, Michael Mann and Stanley Kubrick--with either the very offbeat Cronenberg or such lesser-known filmmaking talent as Susanne Bier, Bharat Nalluri or Len Wiseman.

I’m just spitballing here, but I’m betting there will be lots more Variety stories chronicling Cruise’s ‘circling’ and ‘flirting’ before any of these movies actually get made. When it comes to tubthumping -- another great Variety expression -- I think the trade paper is just as good as Cruise himself.