LOS ANGELES – A day after Viacom’s chairman, Sumner M. Redstone, abruptly evicted Tom Cruise from his longstanding home on the Paramount movie lot, the war of words between the actor’s camp and Mr. Redstone and his allies was on the verge of escalating Wednesday from recrimination to retribution.

Mr. Cruise’s representatives at Creative Artists Agency – the leading talent shop in Hollywood, with a roster of actors, directors and writers so vast that it is nearly impossible for a studio to function without its cooperation – signaled that they would be loath to do more business with Paramount if Mr. Redstone continued to call the shots from on high.

“Paramount has no credibility right now,” Richard Lovett, the agency’s seldom-quoted president, said by telephone from a family vacation in Hawaii. “It is not clear who is running the studio and who is making the decisions.”

That warning came after Mr. Redstone, Viacom’s 83-year-old chieftain, declared on Tuesday that his movie unit was severing ties with Mr. Cruise’s production company after 14 years because the actor’s erratic behavior over the last year was “not acceptable to Paramount.”

Mr. Cruise and Paramount have collaborated on movies that have earned box-office receipts of more than $2.5 billion.

Normally, such studio announcements would come from Brad Grey, chairman of Paramount, or perhaps Thomas E. Freston, Viacom’s chief executive. For such talk to come out of the blue, from Mr. Redstone himself, and then be followed by two days of silence from both Mr. Grey and Mr. Freston, stunned Hollywood’s power elite even more than the copious mud-slinging.

And on Wednesday, the mud became toxic.

Mr. Cruise’s formidable lawyer, Bert Fields, fired back at Mr. Redstone, calling his comments “disgusting” and suggesting that “he’s lost it completely, or he’s been given breathtakingly bad advice.”

Mr. Fields, speaking from vacation in France, added, “That a mogul like Sumner Redstone could make a statement so vicious, so pompous, so petulant as that he didn’t want to make a deal with Tom Cruise because of his personal conduct – it tells you more about Sumner Redstone and Viacom, than about Tom Cruise.”

Mr. Fields may have been speaking as Mr. Cruise’s advocate, but his comments were reflected in conversations with executives, producers and talent agents around Hollywood on Wednesday.

While the industry insiders did not take issue with Mr. Redstone’s prerogative to end a production deal, they declared themselves flabbergasted at the manner in which he did it, although few would speak on the record, since they were not directly involved in the dispute.

Some questioned whether Mr. Redstone was trying to protect his executives from being the bearer of bad tidings. But many wondered why Mr. Redstone would single out Mr. Cruise’s odd behavior from a year ago, during the publicity tour for “War of the Worlds,” as a reason for ending a business relationship now.

One executive pointed out that Paramount had given a green light to “Mission: Impossible III” after Mr. Cruise had repeatedly jumped on Oprah Winfrey’s couch on television, and criticized psychiatric drugs to Matt Lauer on the “Today” show.

Mr. Cruise’s producing partner, Paula Wagner, asserted that Mr. Redstone’s swipe at Mr. Cruise had put both Mr. Grey and Mr. Freston in a “lose-lose” situation.

“If you didn’t know anything about this, how effective are you at running a studio?” she said of the two executives. “Would anyone want to work with management that’s ineffectual? And if you’re complicit in it, would anyone work with a studio that devours its own?”

Mr. Redstone, in his own defense, said in an interview that although he liked Mr. Fields, “his opinion is in the minority,” and that he had taken congratulatory calls from investors and such Hollywood luminaries as David Geffen and the producer Brian Grazer. “Dominick Dunne called me to say that I behaved like Samuel Goldwyn,” he said, referring to the famed producer and studio mogul.

And his friend Alan C. Greenberg – the chairman of the executive committee at Bear Stearns, the Wall Street firm, and a longtime Viacom board member – spoke out in support of Mr. Redstone.

“Tom Cruise has gone nuts,” Mr. Greenberg said. If Hollywood people believe that Mr. Redstone handled Mr. Cruise badly, he added, “They are entitled to their opinion.”

“He did the right thing. The guy diminished his drawing power.”

Asked how he thought Paramount’s divorce from Mr. Cruise would affect Viacom, Mr. Greenberg said: “Positively.”

Yesterday at least, Mr. Greenberg was right. Viacom’s stock rose 21 cents, to close at $36.66.

But what the breakup with Mr. Cruise signals for the future of Viacom’s management is less clear.

According to two executives close to the company, who insisted on anonymity to avoid jeopardizing their relationships in the industry, Mr. Freston and Mr. Grey told top-level Viacom leaders in mid-July that they were not renewing Mr. Cruise’s deal and that they were unhappy with his value as a star.

Still, executives involved in the negotiations confirmed that the studio had recently offered Mr. Cruise a $2 million deal – a reduction from the previous deal of $4 million in overhead and a $6 million fund for developing movie projects.

Mr. Fields, too, confirmed that Paramount executives came to him with an offer to renew Mr. Cruise’s deal about three weeks ago. He said Mr. Cruise decided not to accept it, but before he could deliver this decision to Paramount, Mr. Redstone made his comment to The Wall Street Journal.

Mr. Redstone, for his part, was impatient for his executives to conclude the discussions, people familiar with the talks said. According to Viacom executives and others close to the film unit, Mr. Redstone was irritated that Mr. Cruise stood to make upward of $75 million on “Mission: Impossible III,” a movie that has taken in close to $400 million in worldwide box office, although it fell below expectations. Mr. Cruise had a deal that gave him about 25 percent of the studio’s gross revenue on the movie.

Paramount and Viacom executives said that neither Mr. Freston nor Mr. Grey knew that Mr. Redstone was going to attack Mr. Cruise and that both disagreed with the tenor of their boss’s comments.

Neither Mr. Grey, Mr. Freston, nor even the studio’s public relations executives would issue any statement – a rare circumstance in such a high-profile imbroglio.

Their silence left it to many in Hollywood who do business with Paramount to ask whether Mr. Grey, who became the studio boss in January 2005 and has presided over a turbulent era of headline-grabbing firings, was really in charge after all.

One producer who has worked with the studio said: “They still don’t have it together, that’s the message. Paramount is still un-together. It’s not that tricky to do this.” He added: “Every time they have a short run of calm, they inevitably step in it.”

Mr. Fields, who has counted Mr. Grey among his clients in the past, echoed that jab at the studio chairman. “I have great faith in Brad Grey, but he obviously ain’t running the place,” Mr. Fields said.

As for Mr. Freston, who built MTV into a cable powerhouse but has been judged harshly by Wall Street as Viacom’s stock has languished, there was some debate in the industry over whether the handling of Mr. Cruise’s termination had caused friction between Mr. Freston and his boss. But Mr. Redstone, who controls Viacom with 74 percent of the votes, said firmly that there was no wedge between him and his chief executive.

Mr. Redstone added that he believed he had “struck a blow for the entire industry” in chastising Mr. Cruise. “It is about time that the industry started dealing with these stars in a different manner and let them know that they are not going to get big money and act in a way that is inappropriate and embarrasses the studios,” he said.

Mr. Cruise remained silent for a second day. Ms. Wagner, his producing partner, said their company was pursuing its plans for an equity- financing deal with a pair of hedge funds for $100 million in credit. But Mr. Fields said he was unaware of those plans.

“I don’t think Tom has raised $100 million in a hedge fund,” he said. “And I know nothing about any such thing. I think that’s just talk.”