Harry Shearer Fired from THE SIMPSONS

Go back and pay Tracy Ullman. She's the one who really got screwed

 

If voice actors are really that unimportant, then why didn't Fox replace the entire cast years ago? Do you think they like paying them as much as they do?

 

Ok David Lynch is back in TO. Whew!

 

Because the replacement voices never sound exactly like the originals and the fans would have complained. That it's taken almost 30 years for this to happen is surprising.

 

Arguing that Shearer is being offered market value because other people signed is kind of like arguing that all music acts that signed with Don Arden in the 60's and 70's got paid their market value.

 

My comment was about whether or not the Darren change was an "extreme example". It had nothing to do with "Simpsons"...

 

You said in your earlier post you want to give them each a $100M bonus-- total $600M. If the entire franchise made $6B, you want to give them 10% of the gross. But you seem to have forgotten they make a pretty nice salary, too. Can we say they've averaged $200K per episode over the life of the show? If so, that's over $114M each, for a total of just under $700M for all six. Add in your bonus, and the compensation to the voice talent only-- not the writers, producers, etc-- amounts to $1.3B, or roughly 20% of every dollar generated by the show. Without your bonus, they've only received 12%. Of the gross. I think most would consider that fair. Way fair.

In 2011, during yet another salary dispute, the actors commissioned a report that estimated the show to that point had earned $3.95B, and had cost about $3.07B to produce-- giving Fox a net of just under a billion. Your .5% of that billion dollars would give the actors a paltry $5M, or about $833K apiece. How much would Harry's requested "tiny piece" of the profits need to amount to to make up for the 70% salary haircut he's willing to take?

 

Well yeah, I agree with that. I was challenging someone else's claim that the voice actors are not that important.

 

I'm certain they would all be willing to take a reduced salary. But again, we don't have the real numbers, so it's all a guessing game. Again, I'm convinced one of the key reasons FOX doesn't want to give any animation voice actors a percentage is there's always the risk that they'll sue and want to take a look at the books. Hollywood is filled with stories of how this has gone very badly:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_accounting

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buchwald_v._Paramount

Funny, I could've sworn this was a discussion thread on Harry Shearer being compelled to leave the show over a dispute over money. The situation on Bewitched has nothing to do with this show and doesn't belong in this thread.

 

You could always kill off all these characters in a bus accident, or a bizzaro world version of the Merry Pranksters. Call it the Magical Misery Tour

 

Hollywood is snakey. That cost to produce includes all of the fox exects getting their huge piece of the pie. In fact they could show it list money.

 

Totally agree with you. They are among the highest paid voice actors in history; Shearer rejected the same deal that everyone else was getting which was around $14 mil for two years. He's not a victim.

 

Are we talking about Bewitched or I Dream of Jeannie?



Jeff

 

If this situation isn't resolved somehow and if the powers that be decide not to have all of Harry's characters killed off in some Sideshow Bob scheme and replaces them with other voice actors, could it be the ones who would notice the change the most are the ones who no longer (or rarely) watch the show anymore?

I can't speak for the talent pool of voice actors in LA but I would like to tell you a little story. Years ago I was on a business trip in Japan and I woke up in my hotel room on a Sunday morning. I didn't want to get up just yet and decided to watch the television. In my hotel I could watch BBC news in English and another channel had CNN on for a few hours, other than that everything else was in Japanese. I was clicking through the channels and I happened upon the Japanese version of Sesame Street and thought, "what the heck" and decided to watch a few minutes. The person they hired to do Elmo's voice was spot on, it wasn't as though they had hired somebody to do Elmo's voice in Japanese it was as though the person who voiced Elmo in English was also fluent in Japanese. It was that good. So, there are people out there who can do some pretty impressive work...

 

So all of Shearers characters should speak Japanese from now on. Great idea.

 

Domo arigato Mr. Roboto.

 

Funny, I could've sworn the thread branched off to discuss actors who've been replaced on other shows - a logical subject given the nature of the thread. I also could've sworn you participated in that discussion even when it didn't include Shearer.

If you didn't want to discuss the situation on "Bewitched", perhaps you shouldn't have responded to a comment about it...

 

Ok, it was a hyperbolic adjective. I should have said "highly unusual" due to Dick York's cooperation(he alledgedly suggested Seargent).
Choose your words carefully kids!

 

York... Seargent... who could possibly care?

All eyes are on Elizabeth Montgomery!

Except Smithers'...

 

I branched it, I apologize. Chopping off branch.

Dick Sargent. Dick York. Sargent York? <-Wayne's World.

 

Yeah, but Sandy was playing an entirely different character to the character Valerie was playing (but essentially the same "mother"-type role so I suppose that could count now that I think about it!). I think Sandy's character was the sister (?) of Valerie's character? I haven't actually seen the show in something like 20 years.

 

The difference with Harry Shearer is the other actors discussed just played one role. Harry Shearer plays 23 characters on The Simpsons. Replacing this many voices will not be easy, and they won't be able to do it with just one actor.

 

And Dick Sargent's...