Disunited Artists: Who wins, who loses

By Steven Zeitchik

It was supposed to be a 400-meter team relay. It's turning into more of a 50-meter individual event.

In a move somehow both surprising and logical, Paula Wagner is out as co-chief at UA, just 21 months after joining up with Tom Cruise at the rejigged, partly MGM-owned label --and almost two years to the day since Sumner Redstone fired Cruise and paved the way for the UA revival in the first place.

Who are the real winners and losers in the exit of the producer-turned-exec (turned-producer)? A quick rundown:

Wagner: Without the backing and cash of UA -- and, let's be candid, with a certain amount of egg sticking to her face - a segue to a producer job might be a little trickier than it would be for others. But she's still got some solid projects set up at UA, including the promising futuro-thriller "Champions" from Guillermo del Toro. And look at it this way -- would you rather try your hand shopping around new projects or spend another half-year coping with "Valkyrie" questions?

Cruise: Has there been a more tumultuous week for a Hollywood A-lister? Angelina Jolie replaces you on a tentpole, you contemplate a career trajectory shift with comedies about school-cafeterias, you get buzz for a cameo -- o heavenly irony -- for playing a histrionic studio exec and  your longtime producing partner leaves the company the two of you founded that was meant to give you more autonomy from the conglom suits. That would be a busy year for most stars. Ah, to be back in those Redstone catfight days of '06.

UA: By most accounts, there's still plenty of money from the $500 million film fund. But there's also an executive vacuum and major question marks. As Jay Fernandez and Leslie Simmons write in today's THR: "Given the underperformance of 'Lambs,' the recent resignation of marketing head Dennis Rice, the dearth of greenlights and the PR quagmire enveloping 'Valkyrie,' the studio has had a difficult time engendering confidence." Oh yes, those problems.

Valkyrie: Just when it looked like it had survived the worst of the Nazi-propganda associations, one of its biggest champions is out of a job, the marketing guru in charge of overseeing it has left, and the label behind it is in disarray. What to do about it now? Why, push up the release date so that it comes out in four months, of course. Of course.

MGM: The focus is on the money -- namely, will MGM get access to it now that UA is in a scaled-down, Wagner-less state? Harry Sloan denies that this is in the offing. And indeed, it may be tough to justify to investors (and to Cruise) that MGM needs UA's dough given how much the company is  spending under Mary Parent (and how conservatively UA has spent by comparison). But in other respects, MGM may not be as affected by the Wagner departure as much as it might seem, though if UA indeed makes fewer movies, MGM will have the benefit of not needing to share with its subsid resources and staff -- distribution president Clark Woods, new joint marketing hire Michael Vollman -- quite so much.

Minimajors: UA hasn't exactly been prolific since Wagner and Cruise took the reins, but the fact that one player is in retrenchment could could open up the door, in terms of development and releases, for older minimajors like Lionsgate and newer players like Summit and Overture.

Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford: Probably not smiling, wherever they are. "You know, we kind of liked the perception of the UA name better when it was moribund."