Those lovable Simpsons characters have just signed a new contract with Fox that will have them bursting onto television screens everywhere for another season. This with be the 20th season that The Simpsons is on the air – only, there may be trouble in Simpsons paradise if certain contract negotiations aren’t met.
While the producers of the show are all set and ready to go (new contract in hand), those that provide the voices for each characters are still waiting for a pay raise. Currently, the main talent (consisting of Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Hank Azaria, Yeardley Smith, Nancy Cartwright, and Harry Shearer) pull in around $360,000 each per episode. However, all key players are now asking for a whopping $500,000 per episode. The Simpsons creators are not willing to budge on this issue given the fact that the sheer branding of The Simpsons characters pulls in millions of dollars per year – in short, playing the part of a voice behind a Simpsons character is quite lucrative.
Still, those main talents mentioned above will not go back to work until their monetary demands are met. What does this mean for the upcoming season of The Simpsons? So far, the show has been cut down to 20 episodes rather than the usual 22 due to the break in schedule. While there is no end to this dispute in sight quite yet, all those Simpsons fans around the world hope that both the producers and voice talents begin to see eye to eye rather soon – after all, The Simpsons just won’t cut it within the silent television show business.
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