Tom Cruise

Los Angeles, Aug. 23: Citing Tom Cruise’s year-long metamorphosis from pure box-office phenomenon to pop-culture punch line, Viacom’s chairman, Sumner M. Redstone, said on Tuesday that Paramount Pictures was ending its 14-year relationship with the actor’s production company.

Cruise’s representatives insisted that they had not been fired but instead had quit and had already lined up $100 million in financing to produce movies on their own.

Either way, the parting of the ways was anything but amicable. And it came as the latest sign that the media conglomerates that control Hollywood are growing impatient with the megastars who earn the highest salaries.

Last year, Cruise seemed to sprout cracks in his megawatt-smile facade: jumping up and down on Oprah Winfrey’s couch to declare his love for the actress Katie Holmes. assailing Brooke Shields for taking prescription drugs to treat postpartum depression, and speaking out publicly against psychiatry and for his religion, Scientology.

Cruise’s third instalment of the Mission: Impossible series has earned nearly $400 million worldwide and could earn half again that much from DVD sales. But its weak opening weekend in May left Paramount executives believing that the negative attention and mockery of Cruise had hurt the film. Worse still, Cruise’s rich chunk of the profits could leave the studio barely breaking even.

After weeks of negotiations to extend a production deal, Redstone said that Paramount had given up.

“As much as we like him personally, we thought it was wrong to renew his deal,” Redstone told The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the studio’s decision on its website. “His recent conduct has not been acceptable to Paramount.”

One person who had been briefed by Viacom executives said the studio did not want to renew the contract for a production deal that had reportedly cost as much as $10 million a year. “It was a huge reduction in the size,” according to the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “The issue was the cost of his overhead and his executives. All the studios are getting out of these kinds of relationships.”

But Paula Wagner, Cruise’s partner in Cruise-Wagner Productions, said on Tuesday that she and Cruise had, sometime “in the last few days,” told their agents at Creative Artists Agency to inform Paramount that they were terminating the contract talks.

Wagner said that she and Cruise had already obtained commitments from two hedge funds, and that they had begun looking for a new distribution deal.