Studio To Tom Cruise: Um, We Don't Want You

When I was in little league I played on this team that was sponsored by the dad of one of the kid's on the team named Brian. Brian was shaped like a can of tuna fish and smelled like a can of tuna fish, but we had awesome jerseys that had our names on the back. Anyway, we made it all the way to the championship game, and then in the championship, we were up 6-5, and there were two guys on with two outs, and the batter hit a pop up to left field, where Brian was playing. Apparently he wasn't even paying attention to the game, because the ball hit him in the face, and we lost. When we ran over there his finger was all messed up and it turned out he was picking his nose when the ball hit him, and when the ball hit his nose, it broke the finger that was picking it. The next season at sign ups he was like "Hey guys, this year is going to be awesome!" and some of the other guys were like "Um, yeah, it's cool having your dad sponsor the team, but maybe this year you could be more like the guy who carries stuff but doesn't play?" Then it got super quiet and this one kid Andy who was really mean and would eat bugs if you gave him candy goes "It's cause you're fat and you suck." I'm pretty sure that's pretty similar to how Paramount's discussion with Tom Cruise went when they told him he couldn't be in Mission Impossible 4. Slate.com reports:

It seems that the Cruise camp recently reached out to Paramount about making Mission: Impossible 4 and got seriously disavowed.Paramount's response was to ask whether Cruise would like to produce the film—as in, produce but not star in.

There's no way they just told him no. Studio executives are the only people on earth who can tell you you're a complete piece of talentless shit and make it sound like they're giving you the nobel prize, by using really flowery words. They probably said "Listen, Tom, we think you are just tremendous. But we commissioned a tremendous screen writer and he wrote just a tremendous draft of the script that went a different and just, just tremendous direction. The character of Ethan now is just totally and tremendously different and calls for an actor equally as tremendous as you, but different."

Then they said "see for yourself, I just don't see you in this role." and handed him this script: