Producers Warn Tom Cruise to Tone Down Katie Holmes Romance  6/10/05

Producers of Tom Cruise's latest movie War of the Worlds are anxious his new romance with actress Katie Holmes has sparked such a media frenzy, it's damaging the film.

Polls in US magazines People and US Weekly show a majority of both publications' readers are skeptical about the sincerity of the Hollywood couple's relationship, because both Cruise and Holmes have films released this month (JUN05) - Cruise stars in War of the Worlds, while Holmes is in Batman Begins.

But Martin Levy, an executive at DreamWorks, the studio behind the film, fears the actor's romantic outbursts are stealing headlines away from the Steven Spielberg-directed movie.

He says, "You can have so much attention on a particular issue that maybe the movie doesn't get as much attention as it might. It's the topic of conversation for other reasons."