Petty cash
We're not the only ones who think Sam Smith's "Stay With Me" resembles Tom Petty's "I Won't Back Down." So does Tom Petty! The two reached a settlement last fall in which Smith will pay Petty and co-writer Jeff Lynne 12.5 percent of the song's royalties. "After it was pointed out to Sam's camp, they didn't try to fight it and amicably dished out royalties. It wasn't a deliberate thing," a source told the NME music-news website last week. Petty was magnanimous: "Let me say I have never had any hard feelings toward Sam," he said. "All my years of songwriting have shown me these things can happen."
Here's who you're gonna call
Meet the cast of your new "Ghostbusters": Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones (both of "SNL"). … Ava DuVernay will write and direct a mystery/romance revolving around Hurricane Katrina, starring her "Selma" leading man David Oyelowo. … Mark and Jay Duplass will make four original movies for Netflix.
Griswold family reunion
ABC has ordered a comedy pilot starring Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo titled, oddly enough, "Chev & Bev." … The network also is expanding the Shonda Rhimes universe with a pilot for "The Catch," about a fraud investigator who discovers her fiancé is a con artist. … Melissa Benoist ("Glee," "Whiplash") is "Supergirl" in the CBS series debuting this fall. … Norman Lear, at 92, says he's in talks to revive "One Day at a Time" with a Latino cast. … Katie Holmes will join the cast of "Ray Donovan."
The new 'Let It Go'?
Host Neil Patrick Harris will perform an original song, "Moving Pictures," at the Oscars ceremony Feb. 22. It's being written by "Frozen" songwriters Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, who said, "We love the Oscars and have always been huge Neil Patrick Harris fans, so when he asked us to write him a song for this year's show we said, 'Yes!' before he could finish the sentence — it's possible he may have been asking us for something else."
CYNTHIA DICKISON
