Everyone knows that Tom Cruise is insane, and combined with his exorbitant salary it shouldn't be a surprise that he's the latest in the line of huge stars dumped by major studios. But don't be deceived, it wasn't just Tom's bizarre behavior that did him in: movie star salaries have been dropping for years due to plummeting earnings. (Compare to stars' earnings in 2000.) Tom Cruise is just the low-hanging fruit, and now that he's been picked off the tree just wait for others to follow. What's more, advancing CG technology may eventually render (heh) actors entirely obsolete. Imagine our kids swooning over digital babes and hunks that only exist on a hard drive.
My prediction is that the next overpaid primadonnas to face the axe will be corporate executives -- eventually the spread of information on the internet and the explosion of MBAs will have to dilute their salaries.
