If it's a big deal movie project with Tom Cruise attached, then there's bound to be trouble in Tinseltown. Furniture assailant Cruise is already facing an uphill battle just to get his Nazi flick Valkyrie into theatres; it's been pushed back countless times, and should now arrive in a the cineplex on February 13, a cool $25 billion over budget. But that's not the only project Cruise is having a tough time getting his way with.

Columbia Pictures' Edwin A. Salt was supposed to star Cruise as a fictional CIA officer exposed as a spy. Then he went and demanded a $20 million payday, unaware that his status in Hollywood is one notch above, or below, "joke," and that those blockbuster salaries are usually reserved for actors whose first names are Will and whose last names are Smith.

There's also the fact that Cruise is an old man now, and he's got back fat.

The reasons for Cruise’s departure are not just his diminished popularity, negative public opinion and Scientology — although those would be good enough. It’s also just generational. Cruise is 45. His heyday as a box office star — if he ever had one — is over.

Like past huge leading action stars such as Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, Cruise must face the brutal facts of aging. Ironically, he’s been replaced by Will Smith, whom Cruise has courted for Scientology. Talk about rubbing "Salt" in a wound!

Of course, it doesn’t help that his last big feature, "Mission Impossible 3," was eons ago, in Hollywood terms — 2006. On top of that, even a film shot now and released next summer would have to erase in the audience’s mind Cruise’s upcoming release, "Valkyrie," aka The Nazi Movie, due next February.

[Fox 411]