Meet the money men and women behind the Simpsons as series reaches 500 episodes

Published on Tuesday 21 February 2012 00:00

AS Matt Groening’s delinquent brainchild notches up another landmark, Anna Burnside asks who makes the serious dough out of ‘D’oh!’

TIME magazine’s best television series of the 20th century, The Simpsons, airs its 500th episode in the US tonight. From humble beginnings as part of The Tracey Ullman Show, the tribulations of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie have become an award-truffling, record-smashing behemoth: longest-running American sitcom, longest-running American animated show, winner of 27 Emmys and many more.

Homer’s forehead-smacking D’oh! and Marge’s frustrated growl have entered the culture. Kids who watched the first few series, at the start of the 1990s, are now introducing their own children to life in Springfield. Along the way it has made the people involved, from creator Matt Groening to the South Korean animation studios which do much of the heavy lifting, a heart-stopping amount of money.

Matt Groening

Aged 58, superannuated hippie Groening is now worth an estimate $500m (£315m). He was producing a counter-culture cartoon strip, Life In Hell, when James L Brooks recruited him to Fox. Groening’s Simpsons, a lower middle-class family in the fictional town of Springfield, are based on his own family. (He is Bart, an anagram of brat.) Groening is currently The Simpsons’ executive producer and creative consultant.

He still draws the widely syndicated Life In Hell, and also created Futurama. But a great proportion of his personal fortune derives from the profit participation deal he (and Brooks and co-writer Sam Simon) negotiated with Fox 24 years ago. One industry insider estimates that, over the life of the series, they have been paid $1bn. There was certainly no sign of the executive producers giving up any of their goodies in a recent round of pay negotiations that almost brought The Simpsons to a standstill.

James L Brooks

Writer and director James Brooks, 72, had already won Emmys (for The Mary Tyler Moore Show) and Oscars (for Terms Of Endearment) before he spotted Groening and brought him into The Tracey Ullman Show. When The Simpsons spun off into a series of its own, in 1989, Brooks negotiated the contract that prevented Fox interfering with the show’s storylines, as well as a profit share that has given him a personal fortune of £500m. He gets an executive writer and producer credit on every episode and has been executive creative consultant on 233 episodes. He also co-produced and wrote the 2007 The Simpsons Movie, which grossed $500m worldwide.

Nancy Cartwright

One of the hot tickets of the 2004 Edinburgh Fringe was Nancy Cartwright’s one-woman show based on her memoir, My Life As A Ten Year Old Boy. Everyone wanted to see the soccer mom who opened her mouth and Bart Simpson came out. The 55-year-old Scientologist, worth $60m, has always had an eye for the main chance. She binned her original plan, to audition for the role of Lisa Simpson, when she found Bart more interesting. Groening gave her the role on the spot. She is also the voice of Nelson Muntz, Ralph Wiggum, Todd Flanders, Kearney and Database.

Cartwright – and the other five actors who between them voice all the characters – were initially paid $30,000 per episode. After a dispute in 1998, this jumped to $125,000. In 2004, the voice actors demanded $360,000 per show. They compromised on $250,000, rising to $400,000 in 2008. This state of affairs continued until last year, when Fox threatened to can the series unless the voice actors’ pay was slashed by 45 per cent. They eventually agreed on a 30 per cent drop.

Dan Castellaneta

Dan Castellaneta originally based the voice of Homer on Walter Matthau. The 55-year-old, worth $50m, is also responsible for Grampa, Barney Gumble, Krusty the Clown, Mayor Quimby and Groundskeeper Willie’s strangulated Scottish accent. As well as his regular $300,000 pay cheque (earned for what an industry insider estimates at between two and six days a month in the studio) he has co-written six Simpsons episodes with his wife Deb Lacusta. He is credited on the show as a consulting producer.

Castellaneta’s non-Homer work includes taking over from Robin Williams as the voice of the Genie in Disney’s sequel to Aladdin. He and Lacusta – they met doing improv in Chicago – also perform stand-up comedy together. Their show is called I Am Not Homer.

The writers

The original eight-man team assembled by Sam Simon (who keeps a lucrative executive producer credit in every episode, despite leaving in 1993) brought a track record in comic books and gag writing for the likes of David Letterman. Conan O’Brien, left, worked on the show before replacing Letterman as host of Late Night. Today the writing team is 16-strong. The pay, while generous, is not massively more than the competition.

The writers are credited as “co-executive producer”, a title negotiated by their union, the Writers’ Guild of America. Their salaries start at $90,000 a year, rising to an estimated $500,000. Freelances who submit scripts can expect to earn WGA minimum. One reports being paid $25,000 for a story line and first draft.

The animators

The grunt work of producing the visuals is sub-contracted to several animation studios in South Korea. This greatly reduces Fox’s production costs. Around 120 animators and technicians work on each 22-minute episode. A skilled animator in the US can earn $100,000 a year. The South Korean equivalent earns a third of that.

Fox

The Fox Broadcasting Company, part of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, has made an estimated $2.5bn from The Simpsons’ advertising revenue, merchandising rights and The Simpsons Movie. The cash cow does not moo so loudly these days – the internet has kicked DVD sales and rentals, international sales have dropped, and TV syndication fees have gone down – but each new episode still makes Fox an estimated $1.5m. And they continue to earn their keep: there are now 500 episodes to be re-run on cable and satellite channels until the end of time. Or television. Whichever comes first.

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