Actors involved in contract talks
Thursday, April 1, 2004 Posted: 7:33 AM EST (1233 GMT)
D'oh! "The Simpsons" production is being held up in a contract dispute.
LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- The actors who provide the voices for the cartoon characters on the long-running TV show "The Simpsons" have stopped work in a bid to force a settlement of lengthy contract renewal talks, Daily Variety reported in its Thursday edition.
The Hollywood trade paper said the six actors have not shown up for two script readings in the past few weeks, holding up production on the hit satire's upcoming 16th season.
It quoted insiders as saying each cast member is asking for about $360,000 an episode, or $8 million for a 22-episode season. Each member currently earns $125,000 an episode. The highest-paid star in TV is Ray Romano, who reportedly earns between $1.7 million and $2 million per episode of his Emmy-winning series "Everybody Loves Raymond."
The three-year contracts for Dan Castellaneta (Homer), Hank Azaria (Moe, Apu, Comic Book Guy), Harry Shearer (Mr. Burns and others), Yeardley Smith (Lisa), Julie Kavner (Marge) and Nancy Cartwright (Bart) expired several months ago, and their representatives have been negotiating new ones to no avail, Daily Variety said.
The last "Simpsons" work dispute was in 1998, at a time when the actors were making $30,000 per episode. The show's producer, Twentieth Century Fox TV, hired casting directors in five cities to replace most of them before both sides worked out a new deal and resumed production.
"The Simpsons" airs in the United States on the Fox network. Both Fox and Twentieth Century Fox TV are owned by News Corp. Ltd.
