Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes: $10M Beverly Hills Dream House?

TomKat | Blond Gets Younger

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes may already have their dream house.

I told you last week that Cruise was getting ready to vacate the Beverly Hills estate he’s been renting for years. The landlord is going to sell the place, putting Cruise and family out on the street.

This sparked a whole rumor business suggesting that Cruise was going to buy a big apartment in New York’s famous Dakota apartment building, home to Yoko Ono and Lauren Bacall.

But that seems unlikely. You never know, of course, but Cruise has always liked bunking at the Hotel Carlyle on Madison Avenue and 76th Street rather than at his own New York pied-a-terre.

Now it seems that the answer to Cruise’s lodging issues is right under his own nose. Sources say that about 18 months ago, Cruise bought a compound on long and winding Torreyson Road in Beverly Hills, not far from where he lives now.

The compound seems to have belonged to a Hollywood producer who went bankrupt. Nevertheless, the property, including a couple of houses, went for $10 million.

Last summer, Cruise filed to make some changes to the existing property. He put in a petition with the city of Beverly Hills to construct an 8,000-square-foot addition to the existing 5,500-square-foot home, for a total of 13,543 square feet.

Presumably, that would be adequate space for the dozen or so people who would be bunking with Cruise, wife Katie, baby Suri and Cruise’s two children with Nicole Kidman. The rest of the group includes Cruise’s mother, sister and her three children.

The guest room, however, would not be for Paramount/Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone.

Meantime, industry insiders were fascinated with this past Sunday’s New York Times business-section story about Cruise and his involvement with United Artists pictures.

The Times sort of didn’t get it that Cruise’s first film there is a package deal with the beleaguered star. It's being offered like medicine in applesauce — delivered under the banner of Robert Redford directing and acting, and Meryl Streep starring in “Lions for the Lambs.”

Two hot new stars, Derek Luke and Michael Pena, are also in the mix to keep audiences distracted from Cruise.

But it’s Cruise’s next almost announced project that is more curious. Cruise is supposedly making a buddy movie with Ben Stiller about the Hardy Boys all grown up.

Not only does this sound like one of the worst ideas in Hollywood history, it’s supposed be made at 20th Century Fox and not at UA at all.

Cruise’s producing partner, Paula Wagner, is one of Hollywood’s great executives, but she has her hands full making sense of this one.

As for "Lambs," Redford gets value added by having Cruise in his film. He comes attached with his cousin, actor William Mapother, best known for his work in “In the Bedroom” as the killer of Sissy Spacek and Tom Wilkinson’s son.

Mapother (which is Cruise’s real last name) appears in nearly every Tom Cruise film.

Blond Gets Younger

Susan Blond is the PR guru who’s responsible for Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” selling 22 million copies in the 1980s, and is famous for being portrayed by Fran Drescher in “This Is Spinal Tap” as Bobbi Fleck, the hilarious record-label publicist (Susan was at Epic then).

Last week, Susan celebrated the 20th anniversary of her incarnation as publicist for Prince and a host of stars at Michael’s.

Among her guests: Ronnie Spector, Lenny Kaye, Joan Jett and the peripatetic Danny Fields.

There were also video greetings galore, from the likes of Clive Davis, Charles Koppelman, Christine Ebersole, Usher and Paul Shaffer. No word from Jacko, who probably thinks the whole thing happened on its own. It didn’t. Congrats, Susan!

Tonight, GoLemur.com launches as competition to MySpace and Friendster with a big party at the Milk Bar in New York. The main difference: GoLemur! streams onto cell phones. …

… Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones braved the cold last night for some chicken pot pie at the Waverly Inn in Greenwich Village.

Meanwhile, co-owner Graydon Carter of Vanity Fair entertained screenwriter Mitch Glazer and wife, Kelly Lynch, while Harvey Weinstein held court at the next table.

Word to the wise: This place gets crowded, I mean wall to wall, around 9:30 p.m., what with the meeting, greeting and passing of truffle oil-flavored french fries. …

… And finally: I do think French publisher Hachette Filipacchi has made a terrible mistake closing Premiere magazine. Simply turning it into a Web site is not much consolation.

Issue after issue for the last decade, Premiere has had the best coverage of the movie industry, insightful, well-edited and well-written pieces about actors, directors and the backstage stuff that keeps the business going.

Premiere, for example, broke the story of Dakota Fanning being in the atrocious "Hounddog." What a shame!