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I’ve confirmed that Laurence Fishburne is being paid “north of $14 million” for his CSI gig. And here the world thinks Les Moonves’ CBS Inc is flat broke. His debut on the show, which was also William Petersen’s finale, logged its best ratings since its season premiere, averaging 20.9 million viewers and a 5.8 rating/15 share among adults 18-49, easily winning its hour. Since then, it’s still a Top 5 show. Meanwhile Fishburne’s Cinema Gypsy gets a fat first look production deal with CBS Paramount TV. Former Paramount TV exec Rose Catherine Pinkney is overseeing his television arm.
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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I stopped watching as soon as Grissom left. The show had turned into too much of a soap opera, anyway. That’s why I stopped watching CSI: Miasma a few years ago.
CBS is into franchises. They figure that if they keep the franchise wagon train going, they’re in like Flynn. People get tired of franchises. Just ask anyone weary of Law & Order and its offspring.
Right now, they’re filming parts of the new NCIS spinoff pilot, with downtown LA substituting for Fairfax VA (nothing quite like watching a storefront explode)
With CBS demanding cuts in the budgets of even top shows, how will they justify Fishbourne’s 14m dollar salary next year?
CBS thinks they are diversifying
It’s not a fit
Lawrence Fishbourn is an extremely versatile classically trained actor who has been extremely successful the past 18 years in Stage, Movies and Television.
Sorry to burst the bubble, but William Peterson is a TV actor with limited range, who only had small parts in about a half a dozen movies before CSI. The role on CSI was written specifically for Bill, and required very little range. It was perfect for him.
To this day, Lawrence works as much as he wants in features and he has his pick of Television opportunities, William will probably never work in TV again, and he couldn’t get a good movie roll back when he was in his prime 15 years ago. As to salary, Bill was making approximately $200k per episode more than Lawrence is making now [CBS is saving money with Lawrence]. Personally, I think Lawrence is worth every single dime.
Okay–when do we learn Fishburne is leaving CSI for the movies? Has not exactly set the ratings on fire–more like they jumped on a razor blade right into a bowl of alcohol! So when’s this contract up? Tomorrow would not be too soon in my book. Every episode in season 10 without Langston has been better than any episode he’s been in.