Did E! steal 'Pop Fiction' from Anna Nicole?

If you watched any of E!’s new Ashton Kutcher-produced Pop Fiction this weekend (which was pretty dull), you should probably thank Anna Nicole Smith. TMZ says the show sounds just like a treatment she pitched more than three years ago for a show called Celebrities Strike Back.

In 2004 Smith and Howard K. Stern met with E! programming executives Jeff Shore and Jay James to try to sell the idea. “...What happens if Anna Nicole Smith and other celebrities turn the tables and capitalize off of the overzealous media?” the pitch reads. “What if the next big supposed scandal is not a scandal at all? What if everything is staged, but the media (and the public) don’t know it? ... Anna Nicole and other celebrity guests take aim at the media and push all the limits.” Does that sound at all familiar?

Stern has already threatened a lawsuit, TMZ says, especially since he’s claiming he met with E! about the project just two months ago, with Larry Birkhead slated to pull the first prank. But E! nixed the whole idea for some reason. Maybe they were too busy calling Ashton.

Comments

[belicoso]

It's funny that everyone cries "he's stealing from the dead" when that's exactly what Anna Nicole was all about during the last 10+ years of her life. Anna Nicole drug out as many suits as she could to try and get some of the Marshall fortune, which she knew she had no claim to. And even now it's doubly compounded because Larry will likely try to get that money through her estate. That will be someone stealing from the dead on behalf of the dead......I wonder what kind of outrage we'll see then.

[Lisa]

Stern needs to sue!!..Thats pretty messed up stealing from the dead!