“I don’t think they’re giving you enough information, Dad.” – Lisa Simpson
“I’ll figure it out. I’m gonna use all the power of my brain.” – Homer Simpson
The NFL escaped from its lockout basically unscathed, the NBA is getting into serious crunch time with theirs, and now Zombie Simpsons has added its name to this year’s list of labor-management disputes between millionaires and billionaires. This morning, gossip and media columnist Lloyd Grove published an anonymously sourced article on The Daily Beast reporting that contract negotiations between FOX and the voice cast aren’t going well (thanks to Gran2 in comments). Let’s wade into the weeds of spin-tastic journalism:
Fox studio execs have occasionally threatened to replace uncooperative cast members with sound-alike actors. But for the first time in nearly a quarter century of haggling, the executives have insisted that if the cast doesn’t accept a draconian 45 percent pay cut, The Simpsons will die an abrupt death as a first-run series.
According to Grove’s anonymous “insider”, the threat here isn’t that they’ll continue the show with a new cast, it’s that they’ll just stop it at the end of the current production run. The article goes on to relate details of the negotiation, of which there are two actual pieces of information:
Sticking Point #1 – FOX is asking for a 45% salary cut, actors are offering 30%.
Sticking Point #2 – In exchange, the actors want a back end percentage. FOX doesn’t like that.
The rest of the article is mostly filler, including the widely reported but dubiously sourced claim that the six principle voice actors are currently making $8,000,000 per year (which is roughly $400,000 per episode). Headlined “Money Dispute May End ‘Simpsons’”, the story has already been linked on Jebus knows how many other sites (Google has it on Vulture, USA Today, Huffington Post, and The A.V. Club already, none of which I’m going to link because all of them just point back to the original article) and is currently eating the #Simpsons tag on Twitter.
So, what if anything does this new information mean? Until something more concrete comes along, the answer is “not much”. You will be seeing this story all over the place for the next week at least, but unless some more actual information bubbles to the surface it will be nothing but rehashed speculation, not unlike the recent “Simpsons channel” non-story. So if you’re reading something and all it does is link back to The Daily Beast, you can safely ignore it.
Whoever Grove’s source, they obviously have an interest in the negotiations, but we don’t even know if they’re labor or management so I wouldn’t put too much energy into analyzing either sticking point. Furthermore, there is no reason to believe that FOX wants to end the show. Their motives in keeping it on the air have been purely mercenary to this point, and nothing in Grove’s story indicates a change in attitude.
The bottom line is that while it is possible for a money dispute to finally get Zombie Simpsons off the air, we are a very long way from that happening. Especially considering that previous money disputes were all resolved to mutual financial benefit (if not quite always amicably), there is every reason to believe that this is a tempest in a teapot. Based on what we actually know, I’d say this article raises the chances of there not being a Season 24 from “less than 1%” to “slightly higher but still less than 1%”.
It is nice to see people talking about ending the show. The comments at the original article contain gems like this:
clairels
15 Minutes Ago
FOX, by keeping this show on the air through more than 10 unnecessary, astonishingly unfunny seasons, has continued to brutalize the legacy of this once-brilliant show. Hopefully this final blow will allow The Simpsons to rest in peace.
And this:
LocalMan
49 Minutes Ago
About time. This used to be the funniest show on TV but it hasn’t been very amusing for a loooong time. I gave it a chance last week and immediately turned it off after they did a Breakfast Club flashback joke that could have been stolen directly out of Family Guy.
But until there is real confirmation of this – as opposed to articles just linking the original and adding speculation – there isn’t (yet) much to see here.
Dead Homer Society 
35 responses to “The End of Zombie Simpsons Would Be Great; Still Probably Not Happening”
Yup. It is gone to the point of still running even without the original voice cast. Will they replace their voices with some college noobs with auto-tune on, or would they just resample the lines of older episodes – we might never know… If FOX is capable of building stealth helicopters, they are surely capable of inventing intelligent robots to run the show, write the script by using monkeyrs with typewriters, and South Korean production camps.
Seriously though, they’ll stop. Not this year, not next year, but pretty soon. This obviously can’t be tolerated as it is right now.
Don’t praise the machine.
Bart (voiced by Ashton Kutcher) gets a girlfriend voiced by celebrity
I don’t know…I may be a little optimistic, but this may be it for Zombie Simpsons.
I’ve stated concerning the inane “Simpsons channel” chatter that FOX may be getting ready to pull the plug once this production run is over. Once Season 23 ends, we may hear that FOX is cancelling production and Season 24 will only consist of the holdovers from Season 23. There are two scenarios I could see if this is the case:
(1) Perhaps Zombie Simpsons episodes end right then and there at the end of 2012, with (or without!) a finale that came about 11-12 years too late. Seth MacFarlane’s Flintstones relaunch becomes the mid-season replacement at the start of 2013.
(2) Regular production ends at the end of 2012 and a finale is planned for the end of the 2012-13 teevee season, giving, perhaps, some extra time and planning (don’t count on it) on how to end the show. MacFarlane’s Flintstones starts up in early 2013 and fills in for the rest of the year.
After either (1) or (2), we hear nothing about The Simpsons/Zombie Simpsons for a few years, long enough to get the show’s cancellation out of all our system and for syndication rules to end, then we hear that the “Simpsons Channel” is launched.
Network execs are well aware of teevee ratings, and the suits at FOX may be fearing damage to the Simpsons brand (those words do not belong together). I think they may have finally noticed that just about the only Simpsons-related talk comes in 3 flavors nowadays:
(1)”It’s still on?”
(2)”It’s not as good as it used to be”,
(3)”(Insert Celebrity Here) is guest-voicing!!” and/or
(3)”When will it end?”
With Season 22 being the lowest-watched season ever and with Season 23 setting out to bottom it (despite “Nedna” and Lady Gaga’s guest appearance), those suits may very well be considering every last concept they can to wring every last cent out of the Simpsons name before yoinking the plug, including an all-Simpsons channel and cutting voice actor costs.
It’s true that I don’t know when the average renewal announcements are, but last year’s renewal was announced in August and we haven’t heard anything yet–it’s now October. Yes, any renewal news being held up could very well be due to this salary standoff. Yes, Zombie Simpsons may continue indefinitely–with or without the original cast–because of merchandise sales, regardless of the show’s ratings. And yes, I speculate with little more than a handful of articles concerning the “Simpsons Lockout,” MacSeth’s Flintstones, and a “Simpsons Channel.”
However, this seems to be more of a perfect storm that sinks the Zombie Simpsons ship than last year’s lack of renewal news and Bob’s Burgers premiering mid-season. What better, more high-profile way to end the (so-called) Simpsons than with FOX’s darling Seth MacFarlane doing a remake of a classic cartoon–and one that may have inspired some Simpsons staff at that?
Perhaps this is how FOX is seeing these things, but perhaps I’m (likely) wrong; this is just how I can see all this going down. If I’m right, thank me. :P
I hate having the email above the name; that’s supposed to be Mr. Incognito there.
Not as much “incognito” anymore, are you? =)
*prepares the spam cannon*
Now I’ll know who to blame. >:)
Fixed. Sorry.
Thanks.
Seriously though, it is only speculation (as is whatever I wrote in the first post here earlier). In the late 90s, there have already been one sparking conflict between FOX and The Simpsons cast. It got started over salary issues, pretty much like this one, and got resolved right away. This might as well be the case of today, which we never know. The only thing I can say, however, is that back in Season 8 – 9, the show was still worth something. So the battle was worth winning. Today it ain’t worth shit anymore, so…
On the other hand, FOX never mentions their reason for keeping all this up. And my guess is that we deal with merchandizing at its best. Not only does this still boost worldwide souvenir production (like Charlie wrote here months ago), but they have a change to, undoubtedly, squeeze in a celeb here and there in order to promote them and to self-promote at the same time. Before I thought that the viewer’s number could actually stop them, now I think that it will only wound the walking dead here. The final headshot will only come with the actors finally quitting their jobs. It is promising – yes – but when would that happen?
Wait, Seth McFarlane is doing a reboot of the Flintstones? Just shoot me. Seriously, just put a bullet in my head. Is nothing sacred anymore? Bad enough that the greatest show of all-time, the Simpsons, gets run through the mud for a solid decade-plus. Now we’re going to take another all-time great show and run it through the mud. Handing it to McFarlane should do the trick; he’s a no-talent hack whose shows haven’t had a funny joke since Monica Lewinsky was in the news. Good God, I cannot believe this. McFarlane wants to do his own shitty shows, fine, it’s not like I care about the legacy of Cleveland Brown anyways. But ruining Fred Flinstone pisses me off to no end. I just hope it dies a quick death and nobody even remembers it happened.
Yeah, the whole McFarlane situation is ridiculous. He has 3 (!) shows airing new episodes each week, he has the ridiculous Flinstones reboot, he has (had?) the CAVALCADE OF SHLOCK and he produced that live action show “The Winner”, too. I mean, good for him for being involved with so much stuff, I guess, but … wow. But yeah, totally agree, pissing on the legacy of another show is pretty wrong. I’m sure it’ll be Fred Flinstone talking about making his “bedrock” with Wilma and other ridiculous shit, but it’ll probably get the highest ratings of any show ever.
I can also see the Simpsons being replaced with Allen Gregory, which looks pretty awful in its own right (and has the tagline “FROM A FAMILY GUY PRODUCER… AND JONAH HILL (? Oh, that fat guy from Superbad? Huh)….”.
I gotta say, I feel no sympathy for the actors in this situation, they’re all multi millionaires from working at one show 40 hours a year (!), they don’t actually have to even work ever again and would probably live comfortably for the rest of their lives. And keep in mind, they could all do voices on other shows if they wanted NOW, let alone once the show ends, so I think they’ll be alright. I guess it’s just hard to feel bad for people who do voices for a living, working less in a year than most people do in a week that make minimum wage or whatever, doing actual physical labor. I’m sorry if that offends anyone, obviously most of the cast is hilarious and probably nice enough as human beings, but jesus. They’ve made a hundred-million each, at least, over the years, just talking into a mic. And it’s not like the early seasons where they all worked really hard (for less pay), the voices have been pretty dull just like the writing and animating and etc. for a long long time.
…….having said all that, fuck Fox. The way they treated the King of the Hill staff was a lot worse than any of this shit, and no one seemed to care (speaking of which, they still haven’t released any new KotH dvd’s in like 3 years now. Way to go, Fox!). They’ll probably replace the cast and just let the show go on forever and ever. Though really, if they were going to end it, with the 500th episode looming and whatnot, this is probably the “best” time, from their point of view. “LADY GAGA EPISODE. 500TH EPISODE. LAST EPISODE EVER! WE’LL ACTUALLY GET SOME RATINGS! MAYBE!” The thing is, they have already probably mostly finished this season, right? So, that wouldn’t really leave time for a proper final episode, not that they’d probably do it anyway.
Anyway, I will definitely not get my hopes up, I’m sure this will all be “resolved” in the coming days. Back to TV Carnage…
I would’nt say the actors gain that much. It’s surely less profitable that being a full video actor because you’re just voicing characters. Of course after 20 something years they are rich, but I wouldn’t say they’re millionaires. I can say however that at least Kavner’s and Castellaneta’s careers are pretty much kaputt. If they quit they wouldn’t do anything else anymore, I’m sure of that. Shearer is finished already, despite his humoungous talent. And Azaria, and the rest of them side characters… well, maybe, they still got a 10 something years before retirement, but not in majors projects like this one. So yeah, there is a point worth fighting, but it’s only a matter of years now. The show itself is not worth it anymore, like I said, so the end is very near.
And of course they’re conclude it with tear-flooding nose-blowing sentimental finale, in which Homer will do something ultimately stupid in hopes of being remembered for this, but one week later the public will start bragging about Who Shot Mr. Burns double again.
Well, with Hank Azaria recently buying Dan Castallenatta’s $5,000,000 house, I’m sure they all have a little money saved up…. I don’t really know what any of em are up to anymore, if anything, aside from the Simpsons; the last thing I remember hearing is that Shearer and Azaria had an acting gig or two lined up, and Dan could probably just do some voices for Futurama or something (since he already does the Devil). I’m sure they’d all be alright. But eh.
I am definitely curious on how they’d end the show. If it would even be a conventional “ending”, like Seinfeld or whatever… or “just another episode” like KotH’s finale was. I’m sure it’d still follow the same structure that most episodes do… Bart pulls a prank, Lisa gets interested in something ridiculous, Marge is bored and decides to do boring shit, and Homer gets another job. If they actually want a good finale, maybe they should just do a clip show of nothing but the best moments and lines from the first 9 seasons or so. That’d probably be the only way it’d even be watchable. I shudder to think how they’ll end the show, if they ever do… though I’m sure it’ll end with Comic Book Guy saying “worst series finale ever.” And for once, he’d probably be right.
Oh, they’ll think of a way. But of course it wil suck. They should probably put Maggie up at the end and make a zoom on her pacifier going “suck-suck”. And then Homer shows up and says: “Well, that’s what out show was for its last couple years, so that’s why we’re pulling the plug”. That would actually be too funny, so ummm no, I think they’ll just show a man being kicked by a football and imagine common morons laughing at it.
I judge by the way they treated the Flanders-Edna thing, i.e. clumsily breaking the fourth wall wihtout even apologizing.
Don’t forget the (UGH) Napoleon Dynamite cartoon (which, in itself, is many many years too late, I would like to think) and Allen Greggory, which could all be possible replacements for the Simpsons as well. But yeah I totally see 8-10pm being all 4 Seth shows back to back to back to back. Jesus.
Well, when the show does finally have its series finale (which will be heavily promoted by Fox), it will probably have its highest ratings in years. Proof that the only way to bring old fans back to the show is to end.
After 23 years does the show even NEED to be airing new episodes to sell merchandise?
Exactly! Everyone knows who the Simpsons are by now, this “merchandise” excuse is just crap.
Ending the show wouldn’t hurt merchandise sales, it will still earn bucketloads of buckets of cash.
True. Though I think there will always be an audience for this show, even if the show turns into a subscription-based webisode-only thing or just a made-for-DVD movie every few years or some nonsense. They could replace all the actors, writers, animators, etc. (which actually would probably be a good thing, but who knows? Replace Al Jean, AT LEAST, for fuck’s sake…) and people would still watch it. Fox is a business so it’s understandable they’d want to take off this show which costs MILLIONS of dollars to make per episode and gets superlow ratings consistently. It also explains why they often cut the intros completely now, just to make time for more commercials every episode.
But yeah, merchandising has long been the biggest cash cow for this show, and they could get by on it forever. For a lack of a better example, I saw some guy in an ATARI shirt today and thought to myself that I’ve probably seen more ATARI 2600-related merchandise on people than people who actually bought the console when it was released.
This show has basically bought itself an infinite supply of goodwill because it made 6 or 7 of the funniest seasons of any show in the history of television.
The only real blow would be that this blog would stop having so many hilarious new posts about all the shitty new episodes (to be honest, the only good side of the show being so bad is this blog is so awesome! Hah…), though I guess they have like 8 or 9 years worth of seasons to do retro “crazy noises” posts about.
“…just a made-for-DVD movie every few years or some nonsense.”
I like that idea. Go the Futurama route and release a series of rubbishy movies, each worse than the last. And eventually a return to television and glory!
Hah. I liked most of ONE of the Futurama movies (the one where Fry and Bender go back in time), but… well, the magic has long run out on that series, too, in my opinion. I never hear anyone criticizing Futurama though, so I’m probably in the minority here…
You’re not alone. The Futurama mini-movies were pretty bad, albeit with good bits sprinkled in amidst the crap. When the show came back, it fell into shameless pandering. Futurama really ended on a great note with the opera episode and should have stayed dead, IMO.
It is not an excuse. The merch WILL go down if the show ends. It’s true though that they have sold it as much as they could, so the sales go down anyway, whether they keep producing the show or not. It will just happen faster.
Also, for some reason, FOX don’t see that.
I’ve thought abotu this some more, and I see a likely scenario being this: FOX cancelling the show, and then maybe they’ll do some kind of straight-to-DVD Futurama-esque series send-off thing. Which may not be so bad if they somehow convince some old writers to write it, but don’t worry about test-audiencing it to death.
I mean, as much as I think FOX would just as likely replace the voice actors, Harry and Dan and Hank are pretty much indispensable since each one does, what, like 15-20 reoccuring voices, not to mention another 50 or so, each, from background characters over the years? On the other hand, even old characters are starting to sound sorta weird; some somewhat recent episodes with Apu and Otto for example. Eh.
Fox should probably just cut their losses, make a bunch of “this is the last season, so please watch!” hype, get ratings that will at least be better than last season’s, roll out a bunch of “THE LAST SEASON EVER!” merchandise for one last $500million cashgrab, and call it a fucking day already.
Well, Shearer quit on doing Dr. Monroe’s voice back in 2004, when he was already starting to feel the grip of age on his perspective. Then they just cut the character out, which is brixshit, but oh well. So to me Harry Shearer is pretty much finished: today he can still do Burns, Flanders, Skinner, Chalmers and a couple of one side appearences. He failed Otto like a year or so ago, and now he actually starts failing Smithers. But they won’t cut Otto out yet, well I don’t think so at least, as per Smithers he’s definitely not a goner, so that might pose a problem.
Kavner and Castellaneta are in a tad better position – they only do majorly side-characters, beside Marge and Homer, of course. These don’t appear so often: the last I’ve seen of Selma was mid-season 22 or something, and Sideshow Mel and Willie are constant, but they’re one phrase max guys nowadays. So it’s not that bad.
As per Azaria, he’s the nail of the party today. He’s not that old, and he can still do Apu and Wiggum not to screw them up. He has a couple of side-voices here and there, like Cletus, that government guy and Duffman. But he actually keeps it up. Although if he bought a 5 million bucks home from Dan, I wouldn’t be worried =)
Hank does Chalmers, not Harry.
I can only hope with the low ratings that this pay dispute is finally the shotgun that blows off Zombie Simpsons vile rotting head.
My cat’s name is mittens.
I like to think of this as just another bad marketing ploy. I may be giving too much credit to the producers, but perhaps they know that people in general don’t like The Simpsons anymore and want it to die. This is probably giving the show way more publicity than the lame ‘Nedna’ shipping stunt ever did.
“Oh yeah, we’ll just cancel the show! Hahaha! How would you like that, hunh?”
“Oh no, whatever would we do without The Simpsons. Please do not cancel it. It’s is my favorite show. “
@A.BRA C.ADAVER
That’s one of the reasons why I think that Season 24 could be short and end the show–FOX would then have all next summer to drum up the end of the (so-called) Simpsons should production end.
Perhaps they allow a send-off at the end of next teevee season (May 2013), perhaps the finale comes around Christmas time, just like the premiere did.
If there’s ever been a time that FOX executives have realized that people have stopped watching Zombie Simpsons and are seriously considering pulling the plug, this is it. Few people paid attention to “Nedna,” people have talked (and will talk) about Lady Gaga, but if even she can’t keep hype up, who can?
I can see the ending of Zombie Simpsons after this production run as the very very beginning stages of starting up a “Simpsons Channel.” The channel becomes FOX’s long-term plan for profit.
@Mogambo
At this point, there’s no such thing as bad publicity, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re treating it as such.
Wow. Nice to see SOMEONE else call out Futurama on just how lame and pandering it’s gotten since the move to Comedy Central. I liked several of the 2010 episodes. Some of them were really good. This Summer’s, though, were all borderline terrible. The writers are walking this tightrope in trying to appeal to that small group of hardcore fans who have stuck with the show (with annoying character callbacks and cramming the entire main cast into every scenario) as well as trying to appeal to the dumbass audience that regularly watches Comedy Central (with constant tits and ass and bodily fluid references)/ They’re failing. Badly.
Scruffy stopped being funny a long time ago.
“as well as trying to appeal to the dumbass audience that regularly watches Comedy Central (with constant tits and ass and bodily fluid references)/”
Yeah, that’s a little too far. I mean, say what you want about Comedy Central, but I wouldn’t insult the entire audience of ANYTHING.
I’m exaggerating for effect. I don’t think EVERYONE who watches Comedy Central is a dumbass. Except the one’s who are.
IMO Futurama’s still good but I agree with the person who said “fuck fox” they shafted KoTH, Futurama, Family Guy (twice) and Firefly and I’m getting fed up with them shafting American Dad all the time yet they keep making shitty short-lived shows that only last a couple of weeks and then get burned off in the summer (sons of tucson to name an example) ugh they’re just lucky to have The Simpsons or they would have gone the way of WB, UPN and DuMont.
AHH Rant Over.