A company owned by former Miami Vice/Nash Bridges icon Don Johnson has filed for bankruptcy. Johnson's lawyers claim the filing is to protect the ranch property controlled by his company while they obtain financing to pay off creditors.
Disney's stock is down amidst rumors that Comcast is dropping their bid for the company. And rumors that the company's board is about to oust CEO/struggling imagineer Michael Eisner can't be helping, either.
Pity poor Kelsey Grammer, star of one of the longest-running, most lucrative sitcoms in television history. He of the "$15 white trousers bought during one of his monthly trips to CostCo." Hmmm. That's an interesting detail that the NYT's Michael Joseph Gross chose to share in his profile of Grammer.
With just six days left before the expiration of the Writers Guild of America contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers, the Screen Actor's Guild (SAG) has just increased its dues partly to prepare for a potential strike of their own in the Fall. This, as one hilarious Reuters stringer quips, is "bad news for many waiters in Los Angeles." We prefer to put our own patented, optimistic spin on it and think of it as a boon to restaurant management everywhere.
Randy Fowler, Kevin Spacey's brother, plans to shop a tell-all book exposing the actor's secrets to American publishers. Fowler, who toils as a session drummer and Rod Stewart impersonator, is unabashed about his intentions for writing the book.
Read the numbers and go about your day pretending as if anything else really matters.
This weekend, if you were a celebrity who'd split from a single egg in your mother's womb, you were probably talking to a lawyer. 7th Heaven star (and twin) Jeremy London was taken into custody and released on bail after rubbernecking motorists saw him arguing with his girlfriend on the 5 freeway. Brother Jason, meanwhile, can't get arrested.
We infiltrated this weekend's LAT Festival of Books at UCLA, partly out of curiosity. We all know that people in L.A. don't read books. Was "books" being used at a euphemism for scripts? As it turns out, there were actual books, and people who seemed to enjoy books. We're not sure how the LAT afforded to import tens of thousands of bibliophile tourists (we think airlift). Either that or they lured the locals with an open casting call for the next Survivor.
Now it looks like Time Warner is trying to get in the game to buy MGM, according to Reuters. The interest is in response to Sony's $5 billion bid for the studio earlier this week.
Kill Bill Vol. 2's Budd, Michael Madsen, tells About.com that Quentin Tarantino looks as if he's finally going to go ahead with his Pulp Fiction/Reservoir Dogs prequel The Vega Brothers. Tarantino's been kicking around the idea that features the characters Vic "Mr. Blonde" Vega (Madsen) and Vincent Vega, John Travolta's Pulp hitman.
FOX is considering buying the TV rights to Mel Gibson's wildly successful examination of faith as an exercise in torture, The Passion of the Christ.
This is what is definitely going to happen at the movies this weekend. Predictions are for recreational purposes only, and should not cost any studio executives their jobs, however hilarious that might be.
Once again, Hollywood looks into the idea cupboard, finds it bare, and starts rooting around in the wastebasket for a half-eaten donut. MGM is remaking the Rodney Dangerfield/pre-legal-problem Robert Downey Jr. classic Back to School. Cedric the Entertainer, who is currently reimagining Chevy Chase in Johnson Family Vacation, will update the Dangerfield role.
Variety reports that Lord of the Rings team Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens are in talks to direct the adaptation of Alice Sebold's bestselling novel The Lovely Bones.
Don't expect to see the long-promised fourth Indiana Jones installment any time soon. Harrison Ford, Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas are all tied up in projects that will likely delay the film's release until 2006. (Paramount originally slated it for the Fourth of July holiday next year.)
An appeals court is reinstating an ex-Friends writers' assistant's harassment lawsuit against the show's writers. The woman claims that the writers constantly joked about sex and women, and even went so far as to make sexual gestures in the workplace. (Ed. note—We've always been a sucker for the one where you stick your finger in a little "o" you make with your other hand and move it in and out. Comedy gold!)
