UA on Cruise Control

Jesus Christ -- I leave the house for three screenings, return home tonight and the whole world's gone straight to hell:

United Artists owner MGM announced Thursday the move to put [Tom] Cruise and Paula Wagner in control of the film company founded in 1919 by Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford, D.W. Griffith and Douglas Fairbanks.

It's poetic symmetry that United Artists, generally mothballed amid recent corporate changes at MGM after a short period as an art-house film banner, should come back in the hands of a Hollywood giant.

United Artists founders (L-R) Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, D.W. Griffith and Charlie Chaplin

United Artists reborn: Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner

"The inmates are taking over the asylum." -- Attributed to Metro Pictures president Richard Rowland, 1919

"His recent conduct has not been acceptable to Paramount." -- Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone, 2006

Whatever, really, just as long as he doesn't cast himself as James Bond.

Posted at November 2, 2006 11:10 PM