Sumner Redstone is hopeful that Tom Cruise is the type to forgive and forget. After publicly blasting the actor’s “unacceptable” behavior last summer, the 83-year-old Viacom chairman now says he wants to renew his friendship with Cruise.

I haven`t talked with him recently,” People magazine had quoted him as saying at Zodiac premiere in Hollywood. “But who knows, I look forward to seeing him again. He`s a great, great actor – one of the best. He was a great friend. And I look forward to being his friend again,” he added.

Absence, it seems, really does make the heart grow fonder. Just six months ago, Redstone told the Wall Street Journal he had decided not to renew Cruise’s 14-year production deal with Paramount Pictures, stating his belief “that someone who effectuates creative suicide and costs the company revenue should not be on the lot.” Redstone’s remarks came after Mission: Impossible III opened below industry expectations, a result the studio blamed in large part on Cruise’s couch-jumping antics, which included publicly declaring his love for Katie Holmes (on repeated occasions) and criticizing Brooke Shields for using antidepressants to treat postpartum depression. “He turned off all women, and a lot of men,” Redstone said in December’s Vanity Fair. “He was embarrassing the studio. And he was costing us a lot of money. We felt he cost us $100, $150 million on Mission: Impossible III. It was the best picture of the three, and it did the worst.”

Shortly after Redstone made his initial remarks, Cruise’s defenders fired back, with his attorney Bert Fields calling the Viacom chief “disgusting,” and suggesting he had “lost it completely, or he’s been given breathtakingly bad advice.”

However, Redstone now says that the whole thing was blown out of proportion and claims he never fired Cruise. “I didn’t know anything was going to be so explosive,” he told People. “What happened was, I just gave an interview to the Wall Street Journal. In the course of it, they asked me what was going on. I said, you know, he would no longer be on the lot. They treated that like I was firing him. I didn’t fire him! I had nothing to do with it. But they treated it explosively. And I didn’t like it.”

Cruise never responded publicly to Redstone’s attacks, choosing instead to focus on the next big thing. Three months after his Paramount deal came to an end, Cruise and his producing partner, Paula Wagner, teamed with MGM to reform United Artists, the long-defunct studio founded 85 years ago by Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith. Cruise is currently shooting the studio’s first production, Lions for Lambs, opposite Meryl Streep and Robert Redford. The film is slated to open in November. (Sources: EOnline and Zee news)