After twenty-three seasons, The Simpsons is one of TV’s longest running shows. But that run could be in jeopardy as negotiations between 20th Century Fox and the vocal talent behind the show are stalled.
According to the Daily Beast, the studio is insisting the voice cast take a 45% pay cut or else the long running animated series will cease production.
Dan Castellaneta (Homer, Grampa Simpson, Krusty the Clown, and others), Julie Kavner (Marge and others), Nancy Cartwright (Bart and others), Yeardley Smith (Lisa), Hank Azaria (Moe Szyslak, Chief Wiggum and Apu Nahasapeemapetilon), and Harry Shearer (Mr. Burns, Principal Skinner, Ned Flanders, and others) each earn about $8 million annually for about 22 weeks of work, but they don’t get any of the ancillary money.
The Daily Beast says the ultimatum was delivered by Fox Monday in response to the actors’ proposal “to take around a 30 percent pay cut in exchange for a tiny percentage of the show’s huge back-end profits—amounting to untold billions—from syndication of the show” and merchandising of Simpsons paraphernalia.
What could help the actors is a report in the Hollywood Reporter today that indicates the show could become even more profitable for 20th Century Fox once first-run episodes cease production.
A new syndication deal could be worth as much as $750 million for the long running animated hit.
“The original syndication deal (struck about 17 years ago) prevented Fox from selling the show into any other distribution mechanism but local broadcast,” says RBC Capital Markets analyst David Bank. “Ironically, the cancellation of the show would allow News Corp. to finally sell off-network syndication rights into cable channels (and potentially to online distributors).”
Banks went on to say that the new syndication deal could be a “massive” one for 20th Century Fox.
Canceling The Simpsons could allow Fox to “essentially abrogate” the original syndication agreement, “potentially allowing for about $750 million of incremental content monetization,” Bank said.
He estimated that cable syndication and maybe online distributors could fetch $1 million-$2 million per episode in what is a library of 506 episodes.
“We believe Fox would probably only have the rights for about 15-17 seasons initially (with the rest tied-up in the original broadcast syndication cycle) and we’d imagine Fox would spread the delivery of episodes across a number of years,” Bank suggested.
Please let it end, I don’t understand why anyone watches that show anymore.
Please, Santa, let the Simpsons go away already! I’ll be good, I promise!