Will Binns, PacificCoastNews.comIf it's self-promotion you're after, Paris Hilton is your gal. Any other kind of promotion, you may need to reconsider.
It's a lesson the backers of Hilton's Pledge This! claim to have learned the hard way.
A Miami judge today ruled that he will not throw out a breach-of-contract lawsuit brought against the heiress by the distributors of her 2006 flop. The investors claim Hilton's failure to abide by her contractual obligation to adequately plug the straight-to-DVD sorority flick resulted in a loss of roughly $8.3 million.
Ironically, she's now indirectly doing more to promote the film than any marketing campaign could have hoped for.
U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno said there are plenty of issues to be decided at trial, including whether Hilton's lack of promotion stemmed from her being, as her attorney claimed earlier this month, "the single busiest person on the planet," or whether she shirked her promotional duties out of dislike for the film.
For her part, Hilton, listed as a producer on the film (thanks to her ability to "get cool people in the cast"), claims she put her all into promoting the National Lampoon-branded flick.
"Any chance I got, any red carpet, any press, if I was doing something for another product...I would just bring it up, 'Oh, my new sorority film, it's going to be sexy, it's going to be really hot girls'—like I really, you know, did my best," she said in her deposition.
Her lawyers will do their best when her trial begins June 8.
In the meantime, Hilton is unlikely to face the same legal trouble with her new projects.
The one-woman empire has been making the rounds, along with arm candy du jour Doug Reinhardt, to promote the documentary Paris, Not France, appearing earlier this week at the Cannes Film Festival.
She's also already hyping the forthcoming second season of My New BFF on MTV, something that seems to hearken back to her Pledge This! days.
"It was basically Paris' sorority house," she tells E!'s Daily 10.
"It's about sisterhood—there's pledging, there's crazy challenges. We had the best time. We started out in Las Vegas, and these kids really were up for anything.
"This time I wanted someone who really could be there for me, someone I could trust. And someone who doesn't care about fame."
The second season kicks off June 2.
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