Some shows have nice long runs on television without me catching an episode or noticing they exist. Numb3ers was one of those. Virtually every sitcom of the last five years. There are others.
Nash Bridges was in that club. You know, the show Don Johnson did after Miami Vice (Johnson helped produce as well). With Cheech of Cheech and Chong. Ran in the late 1990s. It’s all a little hazy for me, too.
Apparently it made a lot of money for a lot of people, including a lot of money in international syndication. As Kelly Dwyer said so well at Ball Don’t Lie, it was likely in Belgium of some such place because we never saw it here.
Mark Cuban was one of those people who made money on the show, he was part of a production company (2929 Entertainment) that helped make it. So he was one of the people a judge hit up saying Johnson never got paid his royalties. The Hollywood Reporter has the details.
A judge ruled late Thursday that it was Cuban and [Todd] Wagner’s 2929, along with Rysher Entertainment and investment firm Qualia Capital -- operated by Amir Malin and Ken Shapiro -- that should foot the bill for money owed the actor stemming from his partial ownership of “Nash,” a TV series he co-created in 1995.
Johnson first was awarded $23.2 million in July, a sum that was bumped by an additional $28.5 million last month, but it wasn’t clear who was responsible for paying out all that cash.
Johnson’s legal squabble essentially was with Rysher, but the entity once owned by Cox Enterprises has changed hands a few times, and it was unclear who it was that has been benefiting from lucrative international reruns of “Nash.”
About the only thing murkier than the NBA salary cap is the financing and profits from television and movies. Money is shifted and laundered all over other productions. Drug cartels would be impressed.
So what we know is Cuban has to pay some of this, and Don Johnson is living large of a pretty mediocre show. Oh, and that Johnson is really proud Nash Bridges was his idea. Which, if it just made me another cool $50 million, I would be too. Then again, he probably paid attention to it.