Charlie Sheen Rant May Cost CBS $250 Million
The New York Times reports:
Charlie Sheen’s latest antics may leave CBS and Warner Brothers with a quarter-billion-dollar headache.
The two companies decided on Thursday to halt production of the hit CBS comedy “Two and a Half Men” after Mr. Sheen, the star of the show, unleashed a barrage of vituperative comments about the sitcom’s creator, Chuck Lorre.
The loss of next season’s episodes would mean forgoing about $250 million in revenue between Warner Brothers, which produces the show, and CBS. The actual shortfall would be much lower because the network would reduce its costs and would receive revenue from another show in its place.
But it would still hurt the bottom line. In halting work on one of television’s most successful programs, network executives were fully aware of the financial implications.
“We knew this was going to cost a ton of money,” one senior executive involved in the decisions said, adding, “tens of millions.”
Based on what the program was expected to take in from syndication sales of future episodes, Warner Brothers could fall short by about $100 million in revenue if the show never tapes another episode. And CBS, which charged about $200,000 for each 30-second commercial, may have to make up close to $160 million — the amount it could have made during the next season.
That kind of money usually leads to compromises in Hollywood, even in the most distasteful of circumstances. In this case, however, several of the parties to the decision — all of whom asked not to be identified because the companies were standing on an official statement released Thursday — said the most likely outcome of the confrontation is an untimely end of the series.
“We won’t know for sure until May,” one of the executives said, referring to the period when networks formally announce their prime-time schedule for the fall. But given the hostility expressed by Mr. Sheen, and Mr. Lorre’s avowed resistance to continue the show without him as the leading star, further episodes seem unlikely, the executive said.
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