Oh, Yeah: Mark Cuban Owes Don Johnson $50 Million For Nash Bridges Royalties

Oct 5, 2010, 4:39 PM UTC

You may not remember the TV show Nash Bridges, but it was a cop drama that ran on CBS from 1996 to 2001, and it was f**king FANTASTIC. Don Johnson basically playing himself as a twice-divorced 40-something cop, Cheech Marin as his sidekick, and Don Johnson’s hot teenage daughter, always right around the corner with another ZANY storyline.

It was spectacular. Just the sort of show that belongs on a continuous loop on late-night cable TV. I mean, if you’re not passing out at 4 a.m. on a couch with a half-eaten slice of pizza on your chest and Nash Bridges playing in the background... You clearly didn’t have a very productive Saturday night.

And according to The Hollywood Reporter, none other than Mavericks owner Mark Cuban owes Mr. Johnson some royalties for all those Nash Bridges re-runs that we all enjoyed out of the corner of our glassy drunk eyes. 51.7 million dollars, to be exact:

A judge ruled late Thursday that it was Cuban and 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.

For Cubes, it’s chump change. Or, in rapper parlance, “apple sauce to a boss.” We might fault Cuban for defaulting here, but by the same token, if he just said, “I forgot,” it’d be a pretty convincing alibi.

But Don Johnson! Still getting paid! After all this time...

It’s great. After years of hard-partying, broken marriages, and actually developing Nash Bridges as an un-ironic cop drama, he’s still here. He also starred in Tin Cup during that stretch, which was fantastic. And now he’s $50 million richer. As the saying goes... The more things change, the more they stay exactly the way they were in the 1980s.

Today, everyone still loves a good Michael Jackson song, we’re all terrified of the Middle East, all cool people think Hall and Oates kicks ass, and goddamnit, it’s good to be Don Johnson.