money (12 posts)

Kevin Mazur/WireImage.com

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but in Elizabeth Hurley and Hugh Grant's case, it's also worth about a hundred times that in cold hard cash.

The ex-couple, along with Hurley's current husband, Arun Nayar, have accepted nearly $113,000 in invasion-of-privacy damages from two European paparazzi agencies that snapped shots of the close-knit trio on vacation in the Maldives last year.

Particularly "reprehensible" to the threesome was that both the U.K.'s Big Pictures Ltd. and France's Eliot Press Sarl saw fit to take and sell photos of Hurley's Little Lord Fauntleroy-channeling son, Damian, naked on the beach.

Photos of the group were snapped up by News of the World and the Mail on Sunday and published last October under the cheeky headlines "Liz Does the Blokey-Cokey" and "Hugh's That Gooseberry?" and appeared both in the print and online editions.

In addition to the payout, which the trio plans on donating to a cancer charity, they also accepted public apologies from the paparazzi agencies for the unauthorized shots, which Laura Tyler, the attorney for the group, called "most upsetting," particularly as the friends had selected the private resort to avoid such illicit long-lensed snaps.

And bad tabloid puns.

Lionsgate

In the wake of the horrifying cyclone that hit Myanmar, which is estimated to have killed between 100,000 and 200,000 people and displaced as many as 1.5 million more, celebrities have responded in different ways.

Ben Stiller, Téa Leoni, Nicole Richie and Joel Madden have recorded PSAs for UNICEF, while Not on Our Watch, the nonprofit cofounded by George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Don Cheadle, Matt Damon and others, has already pledged half a million dollars to Save the Children.

Even Sylvester Stallone used a Japanese press conference for the DVD release of the latest Rambo installment, which features the character battling it out in Myanmar, to speak out. "I think what's going to come out of this devastating cyclone—and the fact that our film has made it much more apparent of the violence that these people live under—I think there's going to be great social change in that country, because they can't hide anymore," said the actor, who also showed off his bow-hunting technique.

For more information about how to help, go to UNICEF, the Red Cross, Save the Children, Oxfam or other aid agencies.

Denise Truscello/WireImage.com

Men in Trees has gone the way of the dodo. Unfortunately, Anne Heche's cash supply seems to be nearing extinction, as well.

After Heche claimed she'll be more than $6,000 in the hole if she's required to shell out any more money, a judge on Wednesday granted the actress' request to suspend child and spousal support payments to ex-husband Coley Laffoon for the month of July, according to court documents obtained by E! News. (View the docs.)

And this apparently isn't sour grapes on the divorcée's part.

Per a declaration filed today in Los Angeles Superior Court, Heche is $364,000 in debt—mainly due to her ongoing divorce litigation—and had only $34,840.93 in all of her accounts as of Tuesday.

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HBO / Craig Blankenhorn

HBO was right: It's not TV. If it were, it'd be a little cheaper.

The cable net has announced plans to make available its small-screen offerings on an even smaller screen as HBO programming finally makes its way to iTunes, albeit at a slightly higher premium.

Sex and the City, whose download debut not so coincidentally comes just in time for it to cash in on the film's buzz, will be available for the traditional $1.99 per episode fee, as will Flight of the Conchords and The Wire. But HBO has upped the ante for The Sopranos, Deadwood and Rome, charging their fans $2.99 an episode.

Guess not all shows are created—or priced—equal.

The shows debut online today, and in addition to HBO's bucking of Apple's otherwise uniform price policy, they will also break from tradition in terms of when the shows are made available for download to avoid undermining their pay cable service.

Unlike other broadcast and cable networks, HBO will not release individual episodes for iTunes download the day after they air. Their customers will have to wait until a given series' entire season is made available on DVD.

AP Photo/Lois Bernstein

Never say Neverland.

The seemingly perpetually indebted Michael Jackson narrowly escaped a foreclosure auction on his Neverland Ranch Sunday after the real-estate investment firm Colony Capital bought the loan to the property in a last-minute deal to save the estate.

The purchase of the 2,700-acre ranch was said to have set Colony back $23.5 million, and the company has wasted no time getting into discussions about possible repayment terms with the onetime king of pop, with founder Tom Barrack Jr. saying they were already speaking "with regard to the ranch and other matters."

A statement released by a Jackson spokesman said the singer was "pleased with recent developments involving Neverland" that would allow him to "focus on the future."

As it is, the Santa Barbara property was previously the domain of the Fortress Investment Group, who held the loan to the estate and who was set to auction off the sizable and infamous home—which, like Jackson himself, has seen better days—on May 14, after the star defaulted on a series of payments.

We're no financial planners, but he may want to go easy on the midnight Vegas shopping sprees for awhile.

PacificCoastNews.com

Anyone who has seen Kill Bill knows you don't mess with Uma Thurman.

The Oscar-nominated actress is firing back against the makers of Lancôme cosmetics, whom she claims knowingly used her image to sell their products after her contract expired.

Thurman's $15 million countersuit was filed Friday in Manhattan federal court, just two days after the French makeup giant filed a preemptive suit about the matter.

The 38-year-old beauty signed on as a spokeswoman for Lancôme in 2000 but says her name and image continued to pop up on the company's websites and billboards in Canada and Asia after her contract ended in 2005.

In her lawsuit, Thurman's lawyer, Bertram Fields, claims that "The worldwide and unauthorized use of Thurman's name and likeness for years after the expiration dates significantly diluted the value of Thurman's name and likeness for advertising or promotional purposes."

Lancôme maintains that use of her image was completely unintentional and all advertisements were pulled as soon as the company became aware of them.

Rockstar/Playstation

Last week, videogames killed the radio, TV and movie stars.

Grand Theft Auto IV, the car-jacking romp through NYC, er, Liberty City, sold more than 6 million copies its first week out, with sales exceeding $500 million and all analysts' expectations.

Take-Two Interactive Software Inc., which publishes the game, said it sold about 3.6 million PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 units on April 29 alone, its first day in release.

The massive take represents the biggest opening week of any entertainment product, trumping not only its nearest console competitor, Halo 3, which cleared $300 million in first-week sales, but movies as well, besting previous record holder Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, which cleared just $404 million worldwide in its first six days.

Guess virtual crime does pay.

Stephen Vaughan/Paramount Pictures

Here's one Mission we really thought was impossible: Tom Cruise and Sumner Redstone working together again.

Despite severing his 14-year business relationship with Cruise in 2006—a year after Mission: Impossible III blew up at the box office and Cruise bounced around Oprah's couch—Viacom overlord Redstone now says he's amenable to having the A-lister lead a fourth installment of the money-grabbing franchise.

"That's really up to Brad Grey, who runs Paramount," Redstone told reporters at the Seoul Digital Forum conference in South Korea.

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