With less than a week until the first table reading for the first episode of the eighth season, they actors still do not have a contract.
No, it’s not the end of the show. The actors and the production company will come to a deal. The show has about 20 million viewers an episode. That’s really high, especially in today’s fragmented television world.
Reading the thread title I briefly worried that our entire knowledge of theoretical physics had been destroyed.
I had heard, via radio news blip so no cite, that they plan on going forward with the show even some of the actors are still in negotians.
They’ll still get a raise they are just arguing over how big. So no matter how big they’ll still get more money so they are still willing to work on the show.
Are the cast pulling a “Friends” job, or are they all negotiating separately?
In the end, the actors will win, because the show is a cash cow for everybody.
Penny’s role is supposed to do a drastic change. So she and Leonard actors have reason to be of greater import.
They will get what they’re asking for. At worst there will be a production delay.
But the show rises and falls on Jim Parsons (don’t yell at me - I’m just stating the facts as the world sees them.) All of the core 7 are fairly bullet-proof, but it’s Parsons that makes it all work. Helberg and Nayyar won’t be holding them up for mega-raises. They’re going to be happy with just a decent raise. The one I see being a hold-out is Cuoco. She might be getting delusions of “essentialness” like Suzanne Somers did. No evidence to support that conjecture, just pulling it out of my ass.
There seem to be 3 tiers.
Tier #1. Cuoco, Galecki, and Parsons. They’ve always been the top tier salarywise and they’re negotiating as a group. After 7 seasons, I can see them asking for a million per episode and getting it, too. The show is raking it in and there’s no way it could continue without any of them.
Tier #2. Helberg and Nayyar. They’ve probably already signed. They’ll get raises too. But not as much as the Golden Trio.
Tier #3. Bialik and Roush. If they had to sign new contracts for season 8, they probably got raises also.
As for the other recurring characters, they’re probably just happy they got the gig.
There’s two that I’m not sure will be returning. There’s that redhead that Raj was dating at the end of last season. She never really joined the group. And then there’s Stuart. With the fire at his failing comic book store, that’s one way to “put him on a bus” for latter seasons.
In one way, negotiating as a group seems to make a lot of sense. They will certainly get a lot more money that way. However, the second tier group will wind up with bad feelings and that could lead to a real schism (spelling?) in the cast. So … I dunno if it wil work out or not.
Personally, I think this show has passed its point of no return. If I had to pay to watch each episode. I think that I would not be willing to pay any longer - no matter how much it was.
As far as the Tier One people getting what they are asking for, they may very well get it. But this show has jumped the shark and no matter how much money they are paid, the ratings are likely in some kind of terminal slump here.
At the end of last season Howard hired Stuart to take care of his mother. I suspect that will be an ongoing gag next season, but you never know.
Stewart is the only one I can tolerate lately. Sheldon is great but the writing is so tired on the show that I simply don’t care about most of the characters anymore.
The trendline for the entire series’ ratings doesn’t seem to indicate any such thing. The last season did have the most negative trendline, but was also the most wildly fluctuating season in terms of ratings, I think. But overall, the ratings remain high - tick the series checkbox. You’ll see there’s a negative trend (I’m sure most long-sunning series would have this) but “terminal slump” is just ridiculous hyperbole. Set the axis to 1-10, not autoscale, and the trend is near-flat. Try comparing it to the original shark-jumping show, Happy Days.
That’s looking at the IMDB ratings by episode. If you look at the viewership numbers, they’ve actually grown over time, from 8.31 million per episode in the first season to about twenty million per episode in the most recent season. As I said, numbers that high are unusual these days. And those rising numbers probably explain the three-season renewal.
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I agree 100%.
Esp Penny, her grimaces, eye rollies and puzzled pauses have been done to death
I think the writers ruined Stuart’s character. Earlier in the series he was a successful business owner, an artist who had works shown in art shows, and dated Penny. Then he became an unfunny, depressed and basically suicidal character. The original Stuart was much more interesting.
Frankly, I think Alex (Sheldon’s former assistant) is a much better match for Leonard then Penny.
I had forgotten that.
Comparing reality TV shows (and their prizes) to the budget of actors salaries in TBBT is astonishing.
Approximately 15 one hour episodes of Survivor gives out prizes of about 2-3 Million dollars total.
That apparently is less the actors pay of one half hour episodes of TBBT.
I know that there is huge overhead costs for Survivor that doesn’t apply TBBT, but it still seems out of whack.
A big difference is that reality shows don’t have much value in reruns or in syndication.