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"In the end, she didn't turn up her nose up at $12 million. I would have been very surprised if she had walked away. She needs the money. She lives very very well. It comes at a cost."
——an unnamed source

LOPEZ IN AS IDOL JUDGE, ACCORDING TO NIKKI FINKE

But Only After Fox Rejected Most of Her “Diva Demands,” Reporter Asserts
Jennifer Lopez had been negotiating for guaranteed movie and TV pilots at Fox as add-ons to the $15 million she wants as salary for filling an American Idol judging vacancy, but Fox, Fremantle and 19 Entertainment balked, Nikki Finke reported on Deadline Hollywood.

According to the reporter—who variously referred to the singer/actress as “J-Lo,” “Jlo” and “Team Jlo”—manager Benny Medina orchestrated the meeting with the Idol producers in June, and J.Lo accepted the offer to be a new Idol judge in late July. Since then, Lopez, Medina and her producing partner Simon Fields have been trying to milk the gig for all they could get from Fox to further “her stalled career in the film/TV area." According to Finke, one of her bargaining chips is that Simon Cowell has already asked J.Lo to be a judge on the U.S. The X Factor when it debuts on Fox next fall.

"In the old days, these were called a 'vanity deal' for good reason,” an insider told the reporter. “They simply don't exist today. Will Smith doesn’t have put pictures." Finke cites another source as claiming that Team J.Lo was pissed that the Idol producers never discussed ahead of time their decision to offer a judging job to Steven Tyler.

After Fox called Lopez’ bluff “several times,” rumors of feelers put out to other prospectice judges were planted in the media, while Idol executive producer Nigel Lythgoe issued denials that J.Lo was losing the job because of her diva demands.

Fox countered Team J.Lo’s demands, says Finke, with an offer of $12 million and no film and TV commitments, which Medina and Lopez eventually accepted. "I think it was just positioning," another source told her. "In the end, she didn't turn up her nose up at $12 million. I would have been very surprised if she had walked away. She needs the money. She lives very, very well. It comes at a cost."

Finke also states that the announcement of Idol's new judges has been delayed because J.Lo asked that it coincide with IDJ's dropping Lopez's first single, but that date is reportedly imminent. She signed with the L.A. Reid-led company in March and is reportedly working on new material for Love? with the hitmaking team RedZone Entertainment (Kuk Harrell, The-Dream and Tricky Stewart).

“It's no secret,” as Finke put it, that J.Lo's singing and acting career has been on the skids after her 2010 movie The Back-Up Plan bombed in the spring and Sony Music chose not to redo her expired deal last winter. That move shelved the original version of Love?, featuring production from Danja, Jim Jonsin, Darkchild, Chris n Teeb from Dropzone, and The Neptunes, which had been scheduled for an April release on Epic.

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