Mission: Impossible: III “is likely to gross close to $400 million worldwide at the box office and is projected to earn an additional $200 million in DVD revenue…[and yet] Paramount expects only to break even after star-producer Tom Cruise gets his share of the profit, which two informed sources estimate could be as high as $80 million.” This according to Claudia Eller‘s 7.31 L.A.Times piece about the diminishing interest that Paramount has in cutting any more fat deals with Cruise and his ilk. Paramount recently offered Cruise/Wagner Prods. an annual $2 million budget, Eller reported, instead of the annual $10 million C/W had been authorized to spend before. The bottom line is that the days of big-dollar gross players are over.