Cruise sees box-office share reduced

February 16, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

By CLAUDIA ELLER

LOS ANGELES — It’s hardly a secret that Tom Cruise is no longer Hollywood’s top-gun star.

The 47-year-old boyish-looking actor has had a rough stretch, from an embarrassing jumping episode on Oprah Winfrey’s couch to the clunker “Lions for Lambs.” Many believe that his controversial career has peaked.

Now, in order to revive his big-screen role as dashing secret agent Ethan Hunt in Paramount’s “Mission: Impossible IV,” Cruise consented to a deal that would have once been unthinkable: He’s forgoing a preferential slice of the movie’s ticket sales, the sine qua non of clout in Hollywood.

Cruise will still earn a handsome payday. He will be paid $20 million of his $25-million fee up-front to star in and produce the fourth “Mission” film, which is scheduled to hit theaters Memorial Day weekend 2011.

But he won’t collect a hefty “first dollar” cut of box-office receipts that entitles stars to skim a movie’s revenues before the studio earns back its huge investment and gets a fee for distributing the film, according to people familiar with the deal. If that seems sensible, it wasn’t always the case.

Cruise’s pay structure illustrates the “new normal” for Hollywood’s A-list actors and filmmakers, who no longer can command the super-rich deals that awarded them swollen payouts on movies even when the studios lost money. With once-reliable DVD sales that propped up movie profits in a swoon and other pressures bearing down, the studios are no longer willing to accept second financial billing to talent.

A Paramount spokesman declined to comment about financial aspects of the “Mission” sequel.