Nellie Andreeva

Well, Charlie Sheen may have been able to upstage the hyped relaunch of his former series Two and a Half Men and not with the Comedy Central Roast that also airs tonight but with some news. Sheen has been sending his former employers at Two and a Half Men public love letters over the past week in his numerous TV appearances, including at the Primetime Emmys last night. It turns out the conciliatory tone has spread to the two sides’ legal dispute. Sources confirmed that Sheen and Two and a Half Men producer Warner Bros. are close to a deal in Sheen’s $100M case against the studio and Men executive producer Chuck Lorre, which had been in private arbitration. The value of the settlement is in the millions of dollars and involves primarily payment towards Sheen’s back-end participation on the show. WBTV stopped all payments to the actor/producer in March when he filed his lawsuit. The exact size of the settlement is unclear, though the LA Times, which first reported the pending deal, floated a $25M figure, which is about a quarter of what Sheen was initially seeking.

Sheen had been dropping hints of a pending settlement in his recent publicity interviews, especially the one on The Tonight Show where he defended WBTV’s decision to fire him. “I would have fired my ass, too,” Sheen said. If there hadn’t been a settlement in the works, such statements would’ve given WBTV strong new ammunition in its case as Sheen is suing for wrongful termination while publicly admitting that firing him was the right thing to do. In the same interview, Sheen also admitted that he was “absolutely” out of control last spring when he launched his attacks on Lorre and WBTV.

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