Sumner Redstone, chairman of Viacom which owns Paramount Pictures, is heaping more scorn on Tom Cruise. But it’s all a smokescreen. Buried in the sensational headlines is real reason he ended the contract with the movie mega-star: Tom Cruise was just making too much money.

All the tabloids, blogs and papers are touting the outrageous headlines that “All Women Hate Tom Cruise!” That’s a bunch of malarkey. If “all women” hated Tom Cruise no one would have gone to see Mission Impossible III. Every move that he and Katie Holmes made wouldn’t be scrutinized by the press. No one would care. The fact that he still makes international news, the fact that anyone even cares what Redstone has to say about Cruise just goes to show that he retains much of his appeal.

Granted some of the bloom is off the rose because of his antics. But movie-goers have short memories, and Redstone knows it. So why fire Cruise? Here’s a hint from Redstone’s own mouth:

“The explosion of publicly ending his contract was good. It sent a message to the rest of the world that the time of the big star getting all this money is over. And it is! I would like to think that what I did, or what we did, has had a salutary effect on the rest of the industry.”

That’s right, folks. It’s all about the money. Redstone thinks that the stars of the films are getting more than their fair share of the profits: he wanted to keep more of the profits for his studio, Paramount Pictures. So he made a big stink about Tom Cruise for one reason and one reason only: to have an excuse to end the contract which paid Tom Cruise a whole lot of money.

I hope that Cruise’s fellow actors are paying attention to Redstone’s conduct and think twice about ever working for Paramount. What Redstone did was trash Cruise’s reputation rather than be honest about what was, in fact, a straight up decision by the studio that it wanted a bigger piece of the pie. Which big star is going to be next on the hit list?

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