KansasCity (among others) already reported that Tom had investors:

“Cruise/Wagner has secured financing,” Julie Polkes, a spokeswoman for Cruise’s production company, said. She declined to name the source of the money.
Sources close to Cruise say he’s locked in a $100 million-a-year fund from private equity firms. Under the agreement, Cruise’s studio has the option to boost that to as much as $300 million.

The story continues to say that Tom took “a highly unusual public spanking” this week from Sumner Redstone, who runs Paramount owner Viacom, and that Redstone trashed Tom, whose movies make him the fourth-biggest moneymaker in Hollywood, claiming the megastar’s real-life bizarro behavior hurt his box-office draw.
Sources said that Redstone was fuming particularly at Tom’s comments on Brooke Shields’ use of anti-depressants to fight postpartum depression and his Scientology comments as well as his ‘Oprah’ couch-jumping, as he proclaimed his love for Katie Holmes.

Talks between Paramount and Cruise over renewal of their 14-year contract broke down a week and a half ago, insiders said. According to some accounts, the studio refused to renew a deal that paid Cruise’s company $10 million a year to cover overhead. Paramount is said to have offered Cruise about $2 million, but he wouldn’t bite. His camp has said the breaking point wasn’t about money but about Paramount’s “behavior.”

There are other theories, too. A Reuters report Wednesday said the negotiations broke down over DVD sales. In the last 18 months the DVD growth market has slowed, and there’s less of a guarantee that a movie that didn’t perform well in theaters will make up for it through the home market. Because of that decline, Paramount probably wanted to change its deal with Tom that guaranteed his company 20 percent of DVD revenue.

Paramount’s dumping of Cruise marks a broader trend in Hollywood, where studios are tightening the grips on fat-cat superstars. Recently two Jim Carrey flicks have been delayed or stopped because they were too expensive, and a studio chief publicly chided Lindsay Lohan for missing work on the set.

People names the new movie partner:

The Mission: Impossible star has struck a deal with an investment group that includes Daniel M. Snyder, the owner of the Washington Redskins football team, the Los Angeles Times reported Monday.
Snyder, who’s also the chairman of Six Flags Inc., is said to be the lead investor in a two-year agreement with Cruise, 44, and his producing partner, Paula Wagner.
Among Snyder’s business partners in various deals over the years have been Harvey Weinstein, Bill Gates and Wall Street’s Stan Shuman, whom the New York Post describes as a gatekeeper to billions. (Weinstein is a director on the Six Flags board.)
Neither side disclosed how much Cruise and Wagner would receive as part of the new deal.