WILL IT NOW BE “ONE AND A HALF MEN”?

Charlie Sheen, whose legal and personal issues were reportedly responsible for an abbreviated season of CBS’s Two and a Half Men this year, may be leaving the hit series permanently, according to People magazine. “Charlie’s just done,” a source told the magazine, “and he’s quietly telling his friends he’s not coming back.” The report had barely seen the light of day before the celebrity website TMZ reported that “sources directly connected” to the show — consistently the No. 1 rated sitcom — were “laughing” at it. It all amounts to an in-house sniping skirmish inasmuch as Two and a Half Men is produced by Warner Bros. TV, People is published by Time Inc., and TMZ is owned by Telepictures — all three of them units to Time Warner Inc. TMZ did observe that Sheen is engaged in a salary dispute with the show’s producers, asking that his $825,000-per episode fee be increased to $1.5 million. Warner Bros. TV, it said, has countered with a $1-million-per-episode offer. TMZ quoted one source as predicting: “This deal will be made at midnight on the day CBS announces its new fall schedule [May 19]. Everyone plays the brinkmanship game.” The possibility remains that Sheen may be unable to return to the series next season. He is facing domestic violence charges in Colorado stemming from a fight with wife Brooke Mueller on Christmas Day.