News archive 1999.
News archive 1998.
News archive 1997.
News archive 1996.
News archive 1995.
News archive 1994.
See also:
News archive 1999.
News archive 1998.
News archive 1997.
News archive 1996.
News archive 1995.
News archive 1994.
The wedding of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston is celebrated in Malibu, near LA, and is covered by the local TV channel KTLA 5.
Pitt, 36, and Aniston, 31 ans, united in a private ceremony in the garden of a house whose owner is not known, a television personality.
Impressive security measures are in place around the house facing the Pacific, to protect the 200 guests's privacy.
The Gipsy Kings deliver their music, Salma Hayek, Cameron Diaz, Farrah Facett are among the guests.
KTLA 5 broadcasts images of a firework, the wedding is estimated to cost a million $ according to local media.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The cast of NBC's ``Friends'' signed a two-year contract renewal on Sunday, just a day before the network is to unveil its fall lineup, Warner Bros. Television and NBC announced.
David Schwimmer, Lisa Kudrow, Matthew Perry, Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox Arquette and Matt LeBlanc will each receive $750,000 per episode, while their share of syndication rights will double from a half point to a full point, according to industry sources.
'Friends', the top-rated comedy from NBC, is nearing the end of its sixth season. The six-member cast, negotiating as a group, had reportedly been seeking as much as $1 million each per episode.
Warner Bros. and NBC were said to have countered with an offer of about $600,000 an episode per actor, the figure accepted by the three 'Seinfeld' co-stars for their last renewal.
Each of the "Friends" cast members reportedly earned $125,000 per episode this season.
Alarmed at rumors that the Friends stars were holding NBC ransom to the tune of $1 million per Friend per episode, David Schwimmer called a London radio show today to set the record straight.
"When I hear figures like that I get a little upset," Schwimmer told BBC's London Live show. "It reflects poorly on the cast. People get this idea that we are this group of spoiled actors demanding ridiculous amounts of money. It's all rumor." Of course, the fact that Schwimmer was calling from the back of a chauffeur-driven car doesn't exactly make him seem to be working class.
A spokeswoman for London Live said the show's interviewers thought the call was a hoax at first. "He called up while he was in his chauffeur-driven car on the way to work after he heard our breakfast report," she said. "Initially, the interviewers didn't quite believe it was him."
Schwimmer is in London filming Band of Brothers for HBO.
The famous NBC sextet is renegotiating their contracts, which expire at the end of the season, but they're not that greedy, claims Schwimmer. Each household name is currently getting $95,000 per episode, and they've been rumored to be getting pay increases that will net them closer to $250,000.
What are movie star friends for? For making guest appearances on your show, apparently. Having become good pals while making the mob comedy The Whole Nine Yards, Bruce Willis is doing a favor for Matthew Perry by joining Friends for three episodes.
Variety's Army Archerd reports that during his stint on the NBC sitcom, Willis will play Paul Stevens, described as "an attractive widower and father of David Schwimmer's new, 20-year-old girlfriend."
Schwimmer's Ross has never been a standout in the self-esteem department, so we can imagine his imminent terror at gaining Willis' parental approval.
Bruce can be an intimidating guy, as Perry told Mr. Showbiz in October, "The first three weeks [filming Yards] I was afraid of Bruce. It took a little while. He called me before I accepted the part and left a message on my machine, 'Hey Matthew! Call me back or I'll burn your house down.' It was funny. I called him back I was pacing all over my house talking to him and by the end, we were friends."
Willis will film the first episode Friday night, to air April 27. He'll donate his entire TV salary to charity, says Archerd. The usually $20-million-per-film actor is wrapping work on his untitled Disney feature (previously titled The Kid), for director Jon Turteltaub and then segues into the Sixth Sense follow-up Unbreakable.
It was a battle of Friends at the box office, with new movies featuring Lisa Kudrow and Matthew Perry knocking Courteney Cox Arquette in Scream 3 down five places.
The Presidents Day weekend box office take was too close to call: Exhibitor Relations declared a tie between estrogen fest Hanging Up, starring Kudrow, Meg Ryan, and Diane Keaton as sisters, and Perry's turn opposite Bruce Willis in the hitman comedy The Whole Nine Yards. Both films are estimated to have pulled in $16.1 million over the four-day weekend. When final figures are released Tuesday, either film could emerge as the new No. 1.
Scream 3, which had held on to No. 1 for two weeks running, fell five places with a mere $9.8 million.
Attention, couch potatoes: You've got a Friend in Courteney Cox Arquette. For now, for next season possibly forever.
In the spirit of recent pledges by Friends castmates Lisa Kudrow and David Schwimmer, Cox Arquette tells Britain's TV Times that the show will go on.
Asked if the current season would be the swan song for the Must-See mainstay, Cox Arquette responds, "No, and I am not going to leave the show."
Although it's pretty clear burnout for the NBC sextet is still a few years down the road, everyone's favorite Friends have reserved the right to hedge a little.
"Right now the bigger question is about doing a seventh [season] and beyond that," Cox Arquette equivocates. "All the actors on the show are pretty close and at one point we are going to sit down and talk about our future."
Pressed on the issue, she explains, "Right now we are all very happy with the way the public [is] responding. We're going to reevaluate our situation in the next few months, and then we'll make a decision."
Says the actress, "It has nothing to do with money, but with the quality of the show,
Cox Arquette can be seen in theaters this weekend with hubby David Arquette in Scream 3, which, coincidentally, director Wes Craven has said will, in fact, be the final Scream installment.
Since ascending to the ranks of small-screen stars aiming at silver-screen credibility, Friends vet Matt LeBlanc has added just two features to his film resume. In 1996, he co-starred with a chimpanzee in the bush-league ballpark bomb Ed; two years later he made the not inconsiderable leap to co-starring with Heather Graham in Lost in Space.
For his next cinematic venture, LeBlanc has settled on Sony's redux of Charlie's Angels, presently scheduled to arrive in theaters this November. No, he's not going to be playing Bosley; and what's more, he isn't going to be the voice of Charlie. And we already know Tim Curry is going to play the requisite villainous mastermind.
So what does that leave for poor LeBlanc? Thuggish henchman? Good-natured, browbeaten cop? Neither, as it turns out.
According to Variety, the sitcom stalwart will be called on to provide a little hunka-chunka as the boyfriend of the character played by Ally McBeal bombshell Lucy Liu. Liu, Cameron Diaz, and Drew Barrymore will, of course, be filling the roles (and D-cups) made famous by Farah Fawcett, Jaclyn Smith, and Kate Jackson.
LeBlanc's character is an action hero movie star a leg up from Joey Tribbiani, the struggling thesp he plays on Friends who little suspects that his honey has a secret life busting actual bad guys. There's no word as to exactly how much screen time he'll have, but his appearance will reportedly go unbilled. (Hey, it could be worse. He could have wound up getting lead billing in some wretched turkey like, say, Three to Tango.)
And in other news of famous Friends, Lisa Kudrow is the latest cast member to issue a Musketeers-like pledge of solidarity. Kudrow, who plays ditzy Phoebe Buffay, tells the Calgary Sun the famously tight-knit cast will return together, or not at all.
"There will either be no more Friends or another season with all of us in it," Kudrow says. Sounds like the camaraderie of America's favorite sitcom gang whose thick-as-thieves togetherness has them on the cover of this week's issue of People is alive and thriving.
Kudrow, incidentally, has two movies due in theaters this year. Next month she stars in the female-bonding flick Hanging Up with Meg Ryan and Diane Keaton; in July she'll get swoony over John Travolta in Nora Ephron's Numbers.
Perhaps thinking about the day when she's no longer a Friend, Jennifer Aniston is taking on the role of producer. USA Today reports that Aniston will produce and star in an original series for VOXXY, an Internet site aimed at teenage girls. (No, those double X's don't mean what you think they do.) The 13 "entertaining" and "empowering" half-hour episodes will begin this spring. The actress says the program "will allow me to speak honestly with teens."
Of course, teens are most likely to want to know about her relationship with her boyfriend, babe magnet Brad Pitt, and how Jennifer stays so fashionably thin.
The VOXXY site (www.voxxy.com) isn't up and running yet, but readers can leave their e-mail addresses to be notified when it does launch. Other Web-savvy celebs who've recently promised exclusive online content include funnymen Robin Williams and Adam Sandler.
Aniston is also flexing her television power to develop a spec script for a TV pilot based on the play Parental Discretion, according to Variety. Aniston, who starred in the gay-themed film The Object of My Affection, would executive produce the series about an outspoken father who moves in with his gay adult son. Aniston's dad, John, whose credits include Days of Our Lives, is attached to star.
Mr. Blackwell's annual "Worst-Dressed Women" list is out, and once again Cher's been singled out for her unique way of dressing.
"A million beads and one over-exposed derriere," the self-appointed fashion police officer says of Cher's choice of outerwear. "When it comes to picking the ultimate fashion fiasco, ladies and gentlemen, it's Cher."
Cher, however, wasn't the only recording artist to make the list, which proved to be half music industry notables this year. Celine Dion, referred to as a "profusion of confusion," took second place, followed by Queen Elizabeth, Martha Stewart, and Fiona "kinked and curled Kewpie doll" Apple.
Also on this year's list were teen-pop phenom Britney Spears, Sex in the City's Sarah Jessica Parker, Cameron Diaz, and ... Friends' Jennifer Aniston