Will & Grace Lawsuit About As Funny As The Actual Show

That is to say, not all that much. The four-year lawsuit battle between NBC and the creators of 'Gay people are funny because they like Cher' NBC sitcom Will & Grace has spectacularly ended with a settlement, and a fairly dull one at that.

Ever since 2003, NBC and Will & Grace creators David Kohan and Max Mutchnick have been suing each other because the millions of dollars they'd all made from basically just employing a camp man and a short woman to shriek the word "fabulous" at each other for half an hour several times a year wasn't enough. But now the war is over in the most undisclosed way possible. We'd imagine that NBC and Kohan and Mutchnick made up by realising that, despite their disagreements, at least they could all find common ground by agreeing that Will & Grace was about as funny as falling face-first onto a landmine.

For the briefest amount of time, Will & Grace was the biggest sitcom in the world. Friends had ended, Joey was dying a death and everyone was inexplicably ignoring Arrested Development, and filling the vacuum somewhat uncomfortably was Will & Grace.

Thanks to its clever little formula of running out of ideas very early on and relying solely on half-arsed cameos by celebrities playing against type - Michael Douglas as a gay policeman, Sharon Osbourne as a sympathetic barmaid, Britney Spears as a moronic Christia… oh, wait - Will & Grace made millions of dollars for NBC. So many millions of dollars, in fact, that the two men who created Will & Grace got their knickers in a twist and sued NBC in 2003 over a dispute about profit share and licensing fees and renewal deals.

But then a year later, NBC countersued David Kohan and Max Mutchnick because it said they weren't being very nice and they didn't want to participate in the licence fee negotiations so it was all their fault. And then there was something of a stalemate that was just like an episode of Will & Grace, except without the witty banter, constant slightly offensive stereotypical references to soft furnishings, phoned-in John Cleese cameos, weirdly jarring episode-ending monologue about how homosexuals are people too and the unshakable feeling that you'd rather be watching an episode of Friends.

But the good news is that NBC has reached a settlement with David Kohan and Max Mutchnik, but only after a verdict was decided and the foreman of the jury was thrown out because he'd been keeping a secret 'I hate NBC' website all along. E! Online reports:

The studio's camp filed a motion Thursday asking for a mistrial in light of the potential jury bias, but that point became inconsequential after the two sides reached an agreement. "We are very satisfied with the settlement," the plaintiffs' attorney, Ronald Nessim, said outside the courtroom Friday. His clients had been asking for $55 million.

So, long story short, David Kohan and Max Mutchnik and NBC are all happy with each other even though the undisclosed nature of the settlement means that nobody will ever find out exactly what happened. Which isn't very interesting, we admit. If only we could cover up this fact by employing a stereotypically gay man to do a display of attention-seeking jazz hands to a neurotic ginger woman for half an hour. That'd work.

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NBC Settles Up With Will & Grace Creators - E! Online