If Tom Cruise is in the market for a new moviemaking home, he need look no further than his wacky place of worship – which owns a $41 million media compound where he has prepped for flicks like “War of the Worlds.”
The Church of Scientology’s most famous parishioner got the boot from Paramount Pictures last week for behaving badly.
Studio honcho Sumner Redstone called Cruise’s “recent conduct” unacceptable – alluding, no doubt, to his rants against antidepressants, and declarations of love for Katie Holmes while jumping on Oprah Winfrey’s couch.
Cruise claims to have already lined up $100 million in hedge-fund money to back his own production company, although the investors have not been named. He was seen last week leaving the offices of mogul Terry Semel, the Yahoo! CEO and former Hollywood studio bigshot.
But conveniently for Cruise, Scientology’s 500-acre compound known as Gold Base, located 90 miles east of L.A. in Gilman Hot Springs, Calif., includes a cutting-age film studio called Golden Era Productions.
Nestled at the base of the San Jacinto Mountains, the studio sports a 75,000-square-foot sound stage which is surrounded by a 53-room facility including post-production, costume design, set design resources and a research library.
It also has the largest cyclorama wall in the country – a 50-foot-high, 180-foot-wide “green screen” for shooting special effects.
Opened in 1999, it is known as “The Castle” for its resemblance to a royal Scottish abode.
“There’s hardly a movie made today that could not have been shot there,” said an engineer who helped build the studio but recently defected from the church after 16 years.
Golden Era has yet to produce a feature, instead turning out training and promotional films – maybe because of its location inside the compound which serves as the controversial church’s nerve center.
Staffed by about 300 “Sea Orgs” – Scientologists who sign billion-year oaths yet earn just $50 a week – Gold Base is a city unto itself, complete with a golf course, soccer field and heliport.
Its most notable landmark is a full-scale reproduction of a clipper ship, which is sometimes used as a set.
Cruise has been visiting the fenced-in compound since the early ’90s, say former staffers. He comes to prepare for most every role, bringing an acting coach and personal trainer.
Before filming “Collateral,” in which he played a psychotic hitman, Cruise mastered his assassination techniques on the shooting range. Before “Mission: Impossible 2,” he boned up on his motocross skills. Though he roams free on the base, staffers are not allowed to address him unless he speaks first – and must do so only as “Sir” or “Mr. Cruise.”
“Back in the ’90s, there was a staff member who ran up to Tom and started talking to him,” said Kevin, who quit Gold Base in 2000. “She was sentenced to a year in Old Gillman House,” a prison-camp-like area across from The Castle, where punished staffers bunk 10 to a tiny trailer and must do as many hours a day of hard labor for no pay, Kevin told The Post.