Will Smith, Johnny Depp and Eddie Murphy were the best paid Hollywood actors in the past year, according to Forbes magazine's special issue Entertainment All Stars.
Smith, 39, made US$80 million between June 1, 2007 and June 1, 2008, thanks to blockbusters like I Am Legend, Hancock and The Pursuit of Happyness, for which he was nominated for best actor in the 2007 Oscars.
Depp, 45, who straddles both commercial movies - including the Pirates of the Caribbean series - and more challenging, independent roles, earned US$72 million in the same period. Director Tim Burton's favorite actor, Depp was also nominated to the 2007 Oscars for his starring role in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
Murphy, 47, despite his often criticized aggressive style of humor, is still highly marketable, earning US$55 million in the past 12 months, mostly from the films he starred in, but above all for being Donkey's voice in the animated Shrek series of films.
Shrek the Third also made Canadian actor Mike Myers - the green ogre's voice - the third top Hollywood moneymaker, along with Murphy at US$55 million, despite his recent comedic flop The Love Guru.
And also thanks to Shrek and the voice of princess Fiona, Cameron Diaz was not far behind in earnings, with US$50 million.
She was followed by Leonardo DiCaprio with US$45 million, Bruce Willis with US$41 million, comedian Ben Stiller with US$40 million and Nicolas Cage with US$38 million, according to Forbes.
Sacha Baron Cohen, better known as Borat, has sold Fox film studios a comedy, Accidentes, about an ambulance-chaser-turned-hero, which he will produce and possibly star in, Variety said on Tuesday.
The film is about a personal injury lawyer who becomes a hero among Los Angeles Hispanics for successfully defending a worker against a wealthy employer, but who in the process becomes the enemy of the city's elite.
Cohen, 36, last appeared on the big screen alongside Johnny Depp in Sweeney Todd.
He became a household name as the hilarious journalist in Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, which earned him the 2007 Golden Globe's best actor award.
Roger Ebert is leaving the balcony - but hinting that he's not finished with television.
The famed film critic announced Monday that he is cutting ties with the US program he and the late critic Gene Siskel made famous, a day after Richard Roeper said he was quitting the show.
In an e-mail to the Associated Press, Ebert said Disney-ABC Domestic Television, which owns At the Movies With Ebert and Roeper, has decided to take the program in a new direction.
"I will no longer be associated with it,'' Ebert said.
Ebert started the show 33 years ago with co-host Gene Siskel, who was replaced by Roeper after his death.
He didn't immediately elaborate, but it was clear the Pulitzer Prize-winning Chicago Sun-Times critic wanted the show to remain as it was when he and Siskel, a fellow Chicago newspaper film critic, first hit the airwaves on PBS in 1975.
"Gene and I felt the formula was simplicity itself: Two film critics, sitting across the aisle from each other in a movie balcony, debating the new films of the week,'' Ebert wrote. "We developed an entirely new concept for TV.'' Ebert is a trademark holder on the signature "thumbs up-thumbs down'' judgment that he and Siskel made part of each film review.
Roeper, a columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times, will leave the show this month after eight years, according to a separate statement posted July 20 on the newspaper's Web site. Disney offered to extend his contract several months ago, but an agreement was never reached, he said in the statement.
Last year, as he negotiated a new contract with Disney-ABC Domestic Television, Ebert, according to the Walt Disney-owned company, had "exercised his right to withhold use of the 'thumbs' until'' he had a new contract. Ebert subsequently has said the show could continue to use the "thumbs'' during negotiations and that he never withheld their use.
On Monday, he said he has plans for those famous digits.
"The trademark still belongs to me and Marlene Iglitzen, Gene's widow, and the thumbs will return,'' he wrote. "We are discussing possibilities, and plan to continue the show's tradition. Disney cannot use the 'thumbs.'"
Ebert didn't elaborate on future possibilities. Nor did he say what - if any - role Roeper, whose work he praised, will have.
But Roeper, in his own announcement that he was leaving the program, hinted that perhaps his partnership with Ebert may not be over.
Ebert's announcement brings to a close a chapter in one of the longest running shows in television history. In 1975, Siskel and Ebert, two competing Chicago newspaper film reviewers, launched a program on Chicago's public broadcasting's WTTW. The two jumped to commercial television through the Tribune Co's TV syndication wing in 1982, switching to Disney in 1986.
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