What do you do when you're shown the door at work? You can live in the past and begrudge your former employer for a good long time, or you can dust the dirt off your feet on your way out and never look back.

When you're Tom Cruise and the company in question is Paramount, you look for opportunities and start lining up your options. The Hollywood Reporter is now reporting that Tom Cruise and his business partner Paula Wagner have made an agreement with MGM to resurrect the United Artists movie studio.

Cruise and Wagner, whose longtime production deal at Paramount Pictures ended in August, have taken what is being called a "substantial minority financial stake" in UA, founded more than 85 years ago by movie greats Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford and D.W. Griffith. Cruise and Wagner will set the company's production slate. They will have greenlight authority within an undisclosed range; though the principals declined comment, sources suggest that number is $50 million-$60 million. Wagner will serve as CEO, and Cruise will star in and produce films for UA, though he will remain available to do film projects for other studios.

Time will tell if Paramount was crazy to show Cruise the door, if this is the beginning of a new movement of how studios are run and movies are made, or if the effort will fall flat. Anything that invigorates the industry with variety and creativity can't be a bad thing!

Click the Read link below to read the entire story from The Hollywood Reporter.