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Tom Cruise has become of the last remaining cinematic stalwarts, having cut his teeth in the 1980s with such massive movies as Top Gun, Risky Business and Jerry Maguire. But in 2005, his relationship with Steven Spielberg reportedly started to crumble after the promotional campaign for their movie, The War of the Worlds, fell apart.
Cruise appeared on various talk shows to promote the Indiana Jones director’s adaptation of HG Wells’ classic story.
However, at the time, Cruise was publicly gushing about his religion, Scientology, as well as his love for his new partner, Katie Holmes. He was so impassioned about how well his life was going that when he appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2005, he wouldn’t talk about anything else.
Cruise famously began bouncing on the sofa he was sitting on to yell about how much he loved Holmes. The frenzied crowd looked on in amazement as Cruise jumped and yelled: “I’m in love!”
However, because the Days of Thunder superstar was busy yelling about his love life, he didn’t talk much about the movie.
Winfrey tried to steer the topic back to the picture before he started gleefully laughing again. She commented: “You’re gone!”
Eventually, he succumbed: “Yes, we’re talking about War of the Worlds,” as he stood and shook Winfrey in an odd turn of events.
Cruise barely talked about War of the Worlds, and as a result of his actions, Spielberg reportedly believed the star’s on-screen antics “cost War of the Worlds $30 million in box office takings”. (Via Daily Mail)
Things got worse when Cruise then went on The Today Show to discuss War of the Worlds, but it devolved into an argument about drugs.
Cruise was interviewed by journalist Matt Lauer on The Today Show and was asked about Brooke Shields, who, at the time, had spoken out about her struggles with postpartum depression. She combatted this struggle with antidepressant drugs and therapy; two things Cruise was dead against.
He called Shields “irresponsible” for using the drugs, and claimed that psychiatric therapy was a “pseudoscience”.
Although Cruise’s actions caused outrage at the time, War of the Worlds was still extremely successful.
After it hit cinemas the movie earned a staggering $603 million at the box office. And Cruise and Spielberg’s relationship didn’t remain fraught forever.
In recent months Spielberg and Cruise were reunited at the annual Oscars lunch. Cruise was in attendance for his movie, Top Gun: Maverick, while Spielberg was there for his biopic, The Fabelmans.
According to Variety, the icons embraced at the event, prompting Spielberg to tell Cruise: “You saved Hollywood’s a*s, and you might have saved theatrical distribution.”
Spielberg was of course referring to Cruise’s push to get Maverick into cinemas, and subsequently earning $1.4 billion at the box office after the pandemic was brought to an end.
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