Futurama Voices Could Be Recast 260
Svippy writes "According to reports surfacing on the Internet, Futurama may be recast. The animated series is due to return next year on Comedy Central, but may not be the same as we once knew it. 'As part of the announcement, the show's producers said stars including West, Sagal and DiMaggio had all signed on to return. Turns out that wasn't true. The stars had all expressed interest in returning. But with the budget for Futurama dramatically slashed, the salary offers came in well below what the thesps were asking.' Phil LaMarr posted 20th Century Fox's request for auditions on his Facebook page. However, some are skeptical about whether it's a real casting call or purely a stunt to reduce the salaries of the voice actors."
ob (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:ob (Score:5, Informative)
I love how the 'goodnewseveryone' tag is being negated - and replaced by 'badnewseveryone' - by people who obviously don't understand that the phrase is supposed to be ironic and prescient of bad news.
Hand your nerd cards in at the door, please. You know who you are.
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Farnsworth was known to say "Bad news, everyone" on occasion- like when the supercollider superexploded. Perhaps it is you who must hand over your card, hmm?
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Are you sure that wasn't "Bad news, nobody"? Why even say anything and risk your nerd card?
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'Bad news, everyone' usually implied something that impacted Farnsworth himself, or news that the crew would not be sent on some suicidal task.
If it sucked for someone else, it was usually good news. :)
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Re:ob (Score:5, Insightful)
This is what Slashdot is all about, two comic book store guys battling it out :D
Re:ob (Score:4, Insightful)
Take a look at the "tags" around here. Assume I could click on them to find more stories with those tags -- oh, I can't. I click on them and NOTHING HAPPENS.
But let's assume I could. Typical tags are "haha", "whocares", "ohno", or crap like "badidea", "goodidea", and so forth. Who the HELL actually says, "Gee, I want to read more stories on the subject of 'haha', I'll just click on that... there we go..."
Forget tags. They are useless in general, and slashdot's implentation of them is doubly useless.
Re:ob (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, the tags here serve one useful purpose: they provide a quick indicator of most Slashdotters' opinions related to the article. After all, a time-honored tradition around here is not R'ing TFA. With tags, now you don't have to read the comments, either.
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Try again like this:
Bite my shiny metal ARSE.
Idea (Score:2)
Re:Idea (Score:5, Informative)
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Very effective! They could probably cut the voicework for three really low-budget episodes out of that.
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It was 'marginally profitable' for Fox because they aired it at 7pm est on sundays. 1 hour before the Simpsons. At that point in time they were also putting out commercials for their Sunday line-up that stated... "YOUR SUNDAY STARTS AT 8!"
I don't know if you recall that, but I do. Futurama was marginalized right out of the gate by Fox. Right now, I think there's 3 or 4 networks showing reruns of Futurama, which is at least one network per season.. clearly, the show WAS good, and SHOULD have been profi
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I hate fox as much as the next guy *shed's a tear for firefly*, but isn't it possible that the voice actors are asking for too much, at the end of the day its the writers that make the show great (well the animators add little details in the background too) and while the voices are important, they may be letting it go to their heads. TBH i don't know, you don't know, all we know is fox don't want to pay the voice actors what they want!
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Other articles worthy of reading (Score:5, Informative)
I want to point people to the following articles as well:
Both making very compelling cases.
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What I'm finding confusing is that when Futurama first appeared, certain corners of the net made a big deal about how unlike The Simpsons, Groening actually wholly owned Futurama.
Which makes me wonder why Fox are involved at all when it's on a different network.
Or perhaps TVLand is just a lot more complicated than I realise.
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Another comment on the situation that's well worth reading:
http://www.newsfromme.com/archives/2009_07_17.html#017446 [newsfromme.com]
Most likely it's just Fox making some noise to try to get the cast to sign on without having to pay them more money than absolutely necessary, and if they were at all serious about replacing anyone they'd be doing it very quietly behind the scenes instead of making public announcements.
Not necessarily that bad (Score:2)
In theory, it wouldn't really bother me as long as the characters sounded the same - that's one of the benefits of cartoons - that the "actors" never age on screen, so you can repeatedly recast the voices and keep the show going for decades... but in reality, the voice actors have grown into the role and provide numerous nuances that make up part of who the characters are. Replacing them all at once would certainly be noticeable, IMO.
People need to settle down though. Pretending that they're never going
Comentary (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Comentary (Score:5, Informative)
Not to mention that Billy West - especially - and John DiMaggio have mentioned in numerous interviews how much they care for that show. Billy West once stated it was "the best gig he ever had [tv.com]".
Would they really risk the entire show for some money, when they care so much for it? Of course not. I am personally beginning to suspect this is not a trade negotiation issue, but a publicity stunt to get Futurama on everyone's lips again.
It also puts a lot more real to Comic-Con 2009's Futurama description [comic-con.org]:
1:00-1:45 Futurama: Life or Death?!" Be a part of sci-fi history! Join executive producers Matt Groening and David X. Cohen, and stars Billy West, Katey Sagal, John DiMaggio, and Maurice LaMarche for high-stakes thrills as a top-ranking FOX executive decides live, on stage, whether Futurama will make yet another triumphant return or whether it is gone forever! The very fate of Futurama hangs in the balance! Paramedics will be standing by in case the intense excitement causes any panelists to collapse. Raucous celebration or abject despair to follow the news. Ballroom 20
Re:Comentary (Score:5, Insightful)
Would they really risk the entire show for some money, when they care so much for it?
I've had some jobs I really enjoyed. The products were good, the people were great, and I loved my time there. If they called me right now and offered me less money than they used to pay me, I wouldn't go back.
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look at it this way, they got canned from one job they did very well and now the boss wants them back. It's obviously only going to be one season maybe two tops. While they get royalties, it's really just one paycheck, one time and it means moving across the country for several months only to not have a job when you're done, and possibly giving up other career-building NEW work. The studio gets to keep selling episodes and collecting ads for years to come.
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Risk the entire show for some money?
If you are talking about the voice actors: What if what they would get would be a total ripoff. Where do you draw the line? At 1 cent per gig?
If you are talking about the TV network: You know that the only reason of existence for those companies is money, do you? Everything else is completely irrelevant to them. Half the world could die, and they would still try to make as much money out of it as possible.
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AFAICT, the studio isn't offering them less than they made, just not as much as they're asking for. Let's say your happy job paid you $60K per year when they had to let you go for financial reasons. They call you after a few years and ask you to come back. You say, "Sure, but I want $300K per year." They'd rightly turn you down on that number, but may well come back and offer you $100K or more if they really felt they needed you and you provided that much value. Would you take it? Depends on your circ
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Except the company needs YOU because it's ten million dollars worth of income that would be easier with YOUR help. Once the project is done, they're just going to cut you lose again (business is business), so it's not really your problem right now (they fired you) so how much is it worth to make it your problem?
Re:Comentary (Score:5, Informative)
With very rare exception, television shows are renewed in public and cancelled in private. Since this is a VERY public thing at Comic-Con, the conclusion is foregone. If the cast were fired live on stage, agents would be filing lawsuits on behalf of their humiliated clients within seconds and the executive would be lynched in the hallway. The audience, who would obviously be ticked off, would resent FOX. Why send an executive on a PR mission to intentionally piss off your viewers and draw the ire of the SAG?
So, here's the result: Everyone makes nice, and the show is renewed with the original cast. There might even be a movie deal to up the ante. If there was any doubt about this, there would be no Comic-Con thing at all.
Nothing to see here. Publicity Stunt. Move along.
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Not watching without original cast. (Score:3, Insightful)
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There's already been a bit of that sort of shenanigans with some of the minor characters, I think that Santa was among some that was done by different voice actors over time.
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I wonder if John Kricfalusi will audition?
-- Still bitter about Billy West taking over the voice of Ren.
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Watch some anime; you'll get used to it.
NO I demmand the original japanese cast with subtitles!
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Cowboy Bebop was much better in English.
That's becuase it's fairly old. It's only in the past 5 yeats or so that they've really mangled english speaking anime in the attempt to get it across the pond quicker.
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It really depends on the genre, and the quality of the dub. For native English speakers, anime with a lot of action or very subtle overtones in dialog are typically more accessible in English. For others however, it depends on the quality of the dub.
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This thread just made it click. I had a gut "HELL NO" reaction when I read the headline about the Futurama voices being recast. I knew, hey, they'll surely find people who do an excellent job and are virtually indistinguishable from the originals, but why do I have this huge gut feeling it's going to suck?
Then it struck me as I was reading this thread.... I saw it once before. Evangelion. It had a good english voice cast (I even watched it subbed to give that a chance and decided the english dubbing was
Why not just make them sound the same? (Score:4, Interesting)
Let's hope they decide to bring in folks that sound the same (or very similar) if they do recast. Having different voices would be pretty lame.
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Funny timing for this as I've introduced my kids to The Real Ghostbusters, a show where both Venkman and Janine's voices changed.
Venkman sounds like someone doing a very bad immitation of Lorenzo Music (which of course they are) whereas Janine's voice (the lovely Kath Soucie) is actually MUCH better as it's not as squeaky in the "channeling Annie Potts" way the former one was.
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On a just barely tangentially related note -
It is an absolute crime that no one worked to perfect a synthesized version of Majelle Barrett-Roddenberry's voice prior to her demise. Should should have been the voice of all computers henceforth. :(
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Synthetic voices won't be perfected until AI is perfected ... if it can't understand what's going on the amount of manual markup needed to describe the speech would take a huge amount of time and effort. What I do foresee happening though is voice morphing becoming big in voice acting, that way only the timing is important ... it will make transitioning between voice actors easier and make it easier for less talented voice actors to vary their voice.
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Convincing synthetic voices will require physical modeling of the lungs, vocal cords, larynx, throat, mouth, lips, tongue, and nasal passages. Intonation and speech patterns will be imparted by human sound artists.
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Well, CGI is still a long way from true photorealism for all subjects. But it is extremely useful for portraying things that are very difficult to do with real objects and hand-drawn animation. The motivation for synthesized voice actors doesn't seem as compelling except for a situation like this where it might be cheaper to copy the sound of someone's voice than pay them.
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Expecting a voice synth to follow a simple script with correct intonation, tempo etc etc is like expecting a CG renderer to move a model convincingly from a script and direction in natural English. All the modeling in the world won't make the synthesizer understand the tempo, intonation, emotion etc which it has to use during synthesis ... unless you use huge amounts of markup, with a lot more trial and error and time needed than with human voice actors.
In the short term voice morphing is simply the more ec
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Sorry I should have said *some* voice actors are total dicks.
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Oh, and there's also all the whining voice actors do about when movies use real actors in their movies rather than making do with people whose only skill is having a strange voice. There's a reason they're voice actors and not actors.
One strange voice? Billy West voices Fry, Farnsworth, Zapp, and Zoidberg. Just as the character of "Le Chevalier Raphael Danceny" is materially different from that of "Ted Logan" and "Neo", the voice that West uses for "Elmer Fudd" is different than the one he uses for "Stimps
voices (Score:5, Funny)
In just about every anime, cartoon series, and live-action where they've tried to swap one actor's voice for another, the series usually tanks not long after the switch is made. The only thing worse for a series is to get someone pregnant, involve a baby, or suddenly tack on a female lead or support role when one previously wasn't present. Or a consult with Joss Whedon.
Re:voices (Score:4, Informative)
Anyway, although it does seem that [Joss Whedon's] involvement, while not lowering quality imho, does seem to doom some shows. Why is that?
If you listen to what fans are saying about Dollhouse, a lot of people think the first few episodes were pretty mediocre - one fan said the first five episodes were like five different pilots. But then things started to improve, and by the end of the season the show was absolutely great. Alan Tudyk's performance in the last two episodes was brilliant.
Now look at the ratings. The first few episodes did pretty well, but then the numbers start going downhill, and the final episode got the worst ratings of the season.
If Joss' involvement dooms a show, it's not because he lowers the quality. It's because the majority of the audience would rather be watching Friends reruns.
Good news everybody! (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait, this isn't good news at all.
Seriously, the voice actors in Futurama gave their characters heart and soul. It's not just that the actors are good (they are, of course) but the characters have grown along with the actors, such that in my mind, and in the mind of many fans I am sure, the two are inseparable.
Without the original cast, I won't be watching, simple as that.
It's going to cost more money in the long run to produce an abject failure than to put more money into the show from the start and hoping the fanbase comes back.
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Without the original cast, I won't be watching, simple as that.
That's what we said about Star Trek. And yet, we keep going...
Re:Good news everybody! (Score:4, Interesting)
It could even breath some life into the series, the last two DVD releases felt like the current story-lines were running out of gas (Leela-Fry relationship, Nibbler's true identity, etc). Bender's Game really seemed like the writers out of ideas.
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Yes, I'd rather see a Futurama spin-off with new characters than the original characters without their voice actors.
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Agreed. When I watch my old Futurama DVDs, I more often than not watch with the commentary track turned on. I swear I do have actual friends in real life, but those guys are kind of like the friends I never had. There's no way in hell I'd bother watching if they're not involved.
For that matter, I thought the Transformers movie sucked because they didn't let Frank Welker provide Megatron's voice. I mean, seriously, I can get Megan Fox pics on the Tubes - I don't need a crappy movie for that.
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Yeah, one of the reasons I like Futurama is that it has a cast of characters that are really likable, that the actors have invested a lot of time into making special.
And Zoidberg.
Obviously... (Score:5, Funny)
Obviously the executives didn't take the Torgo's Executive Powder jokes all that well...
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thanks. The haunting "Torgo Theme" is back in my head.
It only took 10 years to get rid of it the first time.
Good news everyone! (Score:5, Funny)
I've invented a device which makes you read this in your head, in my voice! [geekstir.com]
Which is a good thing because you won't actually be hearing my voice while you watch the show! Better turn subtitles on, mwa?
Re:Good news everyone! (Score:4, Funny)
Speech-to-text (Score:3, Insightful)
They have what, 100+ hours of speech recorded for Futurama, presumably the original masters as well? Probably 1,000 hours of speech for each character on The Simpsons on masters. Not to mention accurate closed captioning for the voicings. How hard would it be to write an algorithm to cut and paste the correct words (picking the correct word inflection based on word placement in the sentence/context - presumably there are angry, happy, elated, monotone versions of most words, and the sound files can be edited to convincingly make them sound in context) together? Sure, you'd have to hand-synthesize the occasional odd word or celebrity-head-in-a-jar's name, but we're probably not very far off from being able to fire the voice actors after the third season of a dialog-driven cartoon.
Re:Speech-to-text (Score:5, Insightful)
"Hello... Smithers... You're. quite. good. at. turning. me. on."
I'll give you a hint. If that were in any way possible, we'd be seeing it now. At least for some show like "Pokemon" where the dialog tend to be extremely simple.
We'll see truly convincing computer-generated people long before we'll be hearing them.
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If that were in any way possible, we'd be seeing it now.
Actually in a limited scope is is possible to synthesize the speech of a real person. The only problem is that the researcher who came up with the system was DARPA funded and his project went black after it was initially reported on in the media. There was some footage of him with a recreation of Whoopi Goldberg's voice saying novel things. This is a technology that the spooks want exclusive control over for as long as they can.
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Meep (Score:3, Funny)
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At this point it's still cheaper to pay high quality voice actors than it is to replace them with software. We have the technology (heck we have software now that can decompile individual strings on a guitar (inside a chord, no less), voices and other instruments and retune the individual notes, remove, add or modify guitar riffs, choruses, bridges etc - google Melodyne or "direct note access" or just watch this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFCjv4_jqAY [youtube.com]), we just need a person and time to write the p
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Re:Speech-to-text (Score:5, Funny)
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On the other hand the media corporations may use it as a way to copyright a voice, even in a way that the original actors themselves can't sound like that out of the contracted uses.
On a similar note does anyone own Darth Vader's breath sound effect?
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I think the Darth Vader breath sound effect could be trademarked, but Lucas hasn't defended their trademark for over 30 years so it's pretty much become a genericized trademark [wikipedia.org].
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You can't trademark that kind of thing. You're thinking of a copyright [wikipedia.org]. Which does NOT become invalid just due to disuse.
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wikipedia: A trademark is a distinctive sign (phrase) or indicator used by an individual, business organization, or other legal entity to identify that the products or services to consumers with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or services from those of other entities.
I'll go with "phrase" here. The vader breathing noise is a pretty distinguishable noise, more or less instantly recognizable by most people, and people who've never even seen s
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Look at how well it worked for Chef on Southpark.
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You aren't a big South Park far, are you?
If you were, you'd instantly think of the episode where Chef becomes a pedophile and is killed.
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What season/episode now I'm curious
Using southpark as an example in any simile involving quality is going to end up being about as accurate as a car analogy unfortunately. It's like someone said "let's try and make a cartoon that we can compress down to less than 20mb per episode and not lose any quality" (search "psp southpark" or "video ipod southpark" all the eps are like 56k sound and 400x300px video but it all scales beautifully at h.264 due to how simple everything is. Cartman and the gang sound just
Re:Speech-to-text (Score:4, Informative)
I believe it is Season 10, Episode 1 (The Return of Chef). http://www.southparkstudios.com/guide/1001/ [southparkstudios.com]
This was after Isaac Hayes quit in a huff over SP's treatment of Scientology. The SP boys made a fairly nice "send-off" episode, but since Hayes had already quit, they used the library of his voice clips to do this episode. It is hilarious!
We have the technology. (Score:2)
Check out Vocaloid 2 [crypton.co.jp], the Japanese singing synthesizer. This does a nice job. Here's a sample. [crypton.co.jp]
Setting up Vocaloid for a new voice is a big job; the current version requires that the performer sing a long, standardized set of training syllables. Once you have the voice configured, you feed in a MIDI file with lyrics, pitch, and timing info, and singing or talking comes out.
Clearly, the next step is the ability to train the system from unstandardized speech and singing samples. Once that technology
Casting notice (Score:5, Informative)
I work in the business and I saw a casting notice for this go out yesterday. Right now (if you're a member) you can see the notice on a site called Actor's Access here [actorsaccess.com] and the sides are up on Showfax [showfax.com].
Casting notices for shows like this almost never appear on a site like that (it's a step above Craigslist), so my best guess this is a negotiation tactic to convince the cast to accept contracts that pay less, in line with the reduced budget for the show.
Hmm (Score:3, Funny)
It just won't be right without Wakka as Bender :)
Zapp Brannigan! (Score:3, Funny)
They could replace ... the kids, the rasta dude, the japanese chick, etc.
They could find an even sexier Leelaaaah... Leeluuuhh... Lee-Laaa.
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Should I kill him now, Doctor?
Severely-reduced pay (Score:3, Funny)
Tall Tell Sign (Score:3, Funny)
If they all have East Indian accents, then the question is answered.
calculon (Score:2)
So how are they going to explain the new voices (Score:5, Interesting)
on the show? The crew gets into a horrible accident that requires them to get voice box transplants, and Bender's voice gets erased and he is programmed with a different one.
This is almost as bad in a TV series when an actor or actress is replaced with a different one, and it usually happens to Soap Operas and really Cheesy TV shows. The only TV show to do this on a regular basis and still survive was Saturday Night Live, who kept reinventing themselves with new comedians.
Re:So how are they going to explain the new voices (Score:4, Informative)
Bewitched switched "Darrin Stephens" from Dick York (1964-1969) to Dick Sargent (1969-1972) and did well. Even spun off a few shows and cartoons.
Man, am I dating myself.
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on the show? The crew gets into a horrible accident that requires them to get voice box transplants, and Bender's voice gets erased and he is programmed with a different one.
What a nice idea. If this recasting turns out to be a bluff, I'd love to see them poke fun at it for the opening of the first new episode...get random people the mail room, HR, etc., to voice everybody for the first 5 minutes (or something similar).
Of course if they actually recast, I expect it will go down in flames...I just can't see it being the same.
Opportunity for improvement (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe this (or the more normal work schedule of a normal series rather than the "movies"), will get some of the voice actors to return to their original form.
I think that some of the actors (particuarly Phil LaMarr, interestingly) never quite got the hang of their old characters again.
Losing the old cast would still be a death blow to the show, though.
Re:if someone knows the amount (Score:4, Interesting)
20th Century Fox Television claims the voice actors wanted 75,000 dollars per episode. Which is apparently close to ten times as much as usual.
This seems extremely unlikely by these people, who love and worship the show, that they would risk its stability for their own greed.
My assumption is that 20th Century Fox Television is either making stuff up or playing some gag.
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My assumption is that 20th Century Fox Television is either making stuff up
I watch fox news you insensitive clod!
Re:if someone knows the amount (Score:5, Informative)
20th Century Fox Television claims the voice actors wanted 75,000 dollars per episode. Which is apparently close to ten times as much as usual.
According to whom? The Simpsons actors reportedly earn $400,000 per episode. [telegraph.co.uk] Sure, $75,000 might be ten times what a voice actor earns for an episode of an afternoon kids' cartoon, but we're talking about a prime time show.
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This seems extremely unlikely by these people, who love and worship the show, that they would risk its stability for their own greed.
Telling a prospective employer your minimum acceptable salary is greedy? How is that greed? Someone says, "hey, we'd like you to come back to work for us and be our product again," and you say "well, that sounds good, but I can't really see doing it for less than X," you're just telling them what the job is worth to you.
You do realize this is a job for these people, right? They don't make it out of the kindness of their hearts. Moreover, this is a profitable series with a rabid fanbase. That was built in