Arts and entertainment reports from The Times, news services and the nation’s press.

POP/ROCK

They Don’t Gotta Go: The Kingsmen emerged victorious Monday in the group’s long legal battle over royalties for its enduring 1963 hit “Louie Louie.” The legal fight began in 1993, when the band sued Gusto Records and GML Inc., the companies that own the recording, claiming it was never paid the 9% of royalties due to band members under a 1968 contract. A federal judge in California and a U.S. appeals court rescinded the original contract and gave the musicians the right to all royalties from the time they brought the lawsuit. The record companies appealed, but on Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the Kingsmen, rejecting the appeal without any comment. Court documents contained no firm estimate of how much money the band will collect.

TV & MOVIES

Director’s Legacy Continues: The great Japanese director Akira Kurosawa’s final screenplay is being readied for the screen, with Kurosawa’s assistant, Takashi Koizumi, tackling the directing duties, and his son, Hisao Kurosawa, acting as producer. Filming on “After the Rain,” about the enduring love between a wandering samurai and his wife, is slated to begin in the spring, with completion planned for the fall to mark the first anniversary of Kurosawa’s death. Japan’s Asahi newspaper said that Kurosawa had written directions for “After the Rain,” alongside the script, with notations such as “Make this a funny scene without letting the audience know it,” and “As long as we live, we’re not getting any younger, but to be alive is wonderful--no matter how much we suffer.” Kurosawa died Sept. 6 at age 88.

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Fact or Fiction?: Saying that it fears blurring the line between entertainment and news, ABC has dumped an Oliver Stone TV special that was to have examined the theory that a Navy missile brought down TWA Flight 800. The special, based on the 1996 in-air explosion that killed 230 people, was one of several segments planned for “Declassified,” which was being developed as a possible series. In April, Stone’s production partner Dan Halsted described the project as “an alternative to newsmagazines.” It was to have been Stone’s take on news events, though Halsted said it wouldn’t “be about conspiracy theories.” In a statement, ABC said: “We came to believe that television viewers could find it difficult to distinguish between [the special and the network’s news programming] and we decided not to continue development on this project.” ABC added that the genre of fact-based entertainment “may not be appropriate for a television network with a strong news record and identity.” Although no air date had been set for the special, relatives of the victims had reportedly written to the network urging it to end the project. Stone’s spokeswoman had no immediate comment.

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Sunday Viewing: CBS’ Cicely Tyson miniseries “Mama Flora’s Family” topped the tough network competition Sunday night, based on preliminary Neilsen ratings. Part 1 of the miniseries, which concludes tonight, drew nearly 21 million viewers, versus a solid 17.7 million for NBC’s “Law & Order” movie, “Exiled.” Fox, meanwhile, has room for concern, as the sixth-season premiere of its most popular series, “The X-Files,” tallied only 20 million viewers--down more than 25% compared to last year’s opener.

QUICK TAKES

A preview of an Old Master art auction--including a $3-million painting of Saint Rufina by Diego Velazquez that hasn’t been on public view for 50 years and a $1.5-million El Greco painting of Saint Francis--is at Christie’s in Beverly Hills through Thursday. The sale is Jan. 29 in New York. . . . A recently discovered fragment of a long-lost Laurel and Hardy film has been preserved by the UCLA Film and Television Archive. The 500-foot fragment of the 1930 musical “The Rogue Song,” also known as the “lost Laurel and Hardy film,” consists of a ballet sequence from MGM’s first all-talking, all-Technicolor motion picture. . . . Jamaica’s film board has banned Wesley Snipes’ vampire movie, “Blade,” saying it is too “violent, gory and bloody” for island theaters. . . . Michael Jackson has settled a lawsuit against Britain’s Mirror tabloid over stories that said his face was disfigured by cosmetic surgery. Settlement terms were not disclosed, but the tabloid apologized for four 1992 articles, with photographs, that had suggested numerous operations had left Jackson badly scarred.