Afternoon Links: The Romeo Killer Gets Litigious
Lifetime is being sued by a convicted killer on which it based one of its ripping yarns, Romeo Killer: The Christopher Porco Story, and now a New York Supreme Court judge has “issued an injunction that not only prevents the airing but also prohibits Lifetime from promoting the film.” Lifetime is mad, because they’re projected to lose over a million dollars unless the injunction is lifted; there’s also the issue of what this kind of move might signal for publicity rights in a broader sense. Lifetime cites many landmark rulings that are supposed to restrain judges from making prior restraints on free expression and says: “This is not a case where national security concerns are in jeopardy. It is not even a case involving potential irreparable injury from the disclosure of trade secrets or other confidential information; it involves a movie based on the public facts of a murder prosecution. While plaintiff may not want the story of his crime repeated in a television movie, the constitutional protection of speech and press on matters of public concern flatly prevent the issuance of an order enjoining the broadcast of the movie.” In other legal news, Bart Simpson is going on trial in front of Mr. Burns. Eat my torts.
- Jane Got a Gun continues its free fall. Jude Law is out.
- Christina Applegate is in talks to star as Ed Helms’s wife in Vacation. “Holiday Road” forever.
- For the busy professional who is too busy to watch the eight-minute “Mirrors” video but needs to be able to fake it for his or her podcast: GIFs save the day.
- Everything was smaller in the ’60’s, you see.
- It’s a bad time to be a bigot.
- Differentiating butt-texts from an SMS that could diagnose a stroke.
- Jane Goodall cribbed from Wikipedia and “other [sites] that focus on astrology, tobacco, beer, nature and organic tea” for her new book, Seeds of Hope. Oops.
- Rihanna’s tour buses were stopped at the Ambassador Bridge, and I think you probably know how that ends.
- “When young [PENGUINS] Jeremy and Newsom noticed their new toy last week, they waddled over to get a closer look. Jeremy [WHO IS A PENGUIN] tapped the screen a few times, but Newsom [ALSO A PENGUIN] had a blast and quickly became the resident high-scorer [PLAYING A PENGUIN IPAD GAME].”
- Crazy people and their Illuminati theories are hard at work making things for me to read at three in the morning.
- Here are Robert Ball’s Game of Thrones portraits for Wired.
- And here is Kate Upton trying to figure out when to pull the flake-out lever on her prom plans with a teenager.
- “Um, seriously, I have had a meeting about being in The Hunger Games. Yes.” —Rebel Wilson
- Stop kidnapping baby sloths, you heartless monsters!
Filed Under: Justin Timberlake, Loose Ends
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