Tom Cruise Lives! Or Does He?

Last year, just after the 19th release-date change for Valkyrie and just before the dramatic front-office fissures that rocked United Artists, many observers diagnosed Tom Cruise's career as terminally ill. Would he have time, though, to say his goodbyes to the likes of Oprah Winfrey, Matt Lauer, and so many other aggrieved souls among the American public? And would he put up a fight to survive? Does Scientology even allow that? Kim Masters suggests yes, yes and yes.

While Masters overshoots slightly with the headline "The Resurrection of Tom Cruise" -- he didn't die as much as Hollywood mortality slapped him in the face -- there is a strong case to be made for the megastar's restoration. On one hand it starts with CAA, who likely planted a pair of semi-recent, pro-Cruise Variety stories touring his stable of purebred script doctors. (Masters emphasizes the connection from the start, as if to preempt any Death Star skulduggery attributed to her own column.) It doesn't really matter who planted what where during a slow news period, though; it matters more that after four years of odd behavior and underachieving films, Tom Cruise both possesses and wants more juice than any actor in Hollywood. Not even Will Smith has a studio (albeit one with frozen credit), and last I checked, Valkyrie outgrossed Seven Pounds both domestically and globally.

That's more than bragging rights, but the days of immodesty are over. Cruise's Apology Tour '08 squared up some cultural debts on Today and Oprah, and he successfully disappeared last summer into fat-suited Tropic Thunder infamy. And once someone finally had to go at UA, it wasn't going to be Cruise; Paula Wagner had a shorter, survivable fall to look forward to. Also, Masters kind of hilariously alludes that Cruise may have even gotten over Scientology's fundamental aversion to bad news. "He's had some hard conversations with a lot of people," one source tells her. "He's doing everything he can to be the best guy to be in business with."

OK, that's definitely CAA. But even so, his reported reluctance to cut his rate for Fox -- or even acknowledge the studio's request to do so to get its project Wichita off the ground -- doesn't make his conversion any less likely. In fact, it makes sense: The only thing worth leveraging for is a good screenplay, so assuming the script-doctor story is even half-true, what's the rush? If the truest sign of Hollywood character is being rich and being right, then Cruise can and must -- and obviously will -- afford to wait.

· The Resurrection of Tom Cruise [Daily Beast]