Negotiations Stalled for Voice Actors in 'The Simpsons'
By BERNARD WEINRAUB
LOS ANGELES, April 13 — On television Homer J. Simpson is an underachiever, the safety inspector at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, with the record for most years worked at an entry-level position. In real life Mr. Simpson and his family of subversives have, by the estimate of accountants employed by the actors who supply their voices, earned Fox upward of $2.5 billion as the stars of one of the longest-running prime-time series in television history.
Now those actors are demanding their share of the wealth. Insisting that "The Simpsons" would not be the same without them, the professionals behind the voices of Homer, Bart, Marge and the show's other animated characters are holding out for the kind of financial rewards earned by actors on hit sitcoms like "Friends" and "Frasier."
Hollywood executives say that the actors' insistence on not just a near tripling of their salaries — to $8 million a season — but also on a share of the show's profits is a first for an animated series, a genre that studios and networks have counted on for predictable costs and peaceable casts.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/14/arts/television/14SIMP.html?hp>
Carl
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