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Tom Cruise and his producing partner Paula Wagner have inked a deal to take over MGM's dormant United Artists film label, Anne Thompson reports at the Hollywood Reporter's Risky Biz blog. Bert Fields brokered the deal, she says.
Wagner will serve as MGM's operating partner and CEO of the new UA. Cruise and Wagner will have "substantial ownership," the MGM press release says, as well as "control of setting the company's production slate, from development to production greenlighting ability, subject to certain perameters." (That probably means there's a budget cap.) Cruise will star in as well as produce some of these films.
No, they are not quite Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, D.W. Griffith and Charlie Chaplin, who founded the original United Artists.
* Mark Lacter analyzes: At LA Biz Observed.