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Post by General Kenobi on Sept 29, 2018 19:57:32 GMT
I just hope Disney goes ahead with the movie for the greatest Jedi of all time.
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Post by Primemovermithrax Pejorative on Sept 29, 2018 20:01:52 GMT
Lucas was/is more of an experimental filmmaker than a storyteller and this became a huge handicap when Kurtz (and Marcia Lucas) were gone. He provided a lot of quirky imagination but was never doing it as a passion project.
Given that Indiana Jones is a remake of Secret of the Incas it appears Star Wars was basically a remake of FOX's Prince Valiant with a sci-fi theme. How much control did Lucas really have? Maybe not that much.
I would suspect Luke in a Lucas-made sequel would have been unsatisfactory to fans as well. he would not have just been another Alec Guinness guru character.
I have not seen the new Batwoman but I remember the 1950s version. Lee Merriwether would have been ideal casting for her in the 1966 movie if they had Newmar as Catwoman instead (not that LM was a bad Catwoman but she was merely substituting for Newmar).
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Post by Primemovermithrax Pejorative on Sept 29, 2018 20:04:12 GMT
Disney won't do a positive Obi Wan Kenobi film. They would make him unusually weak or depressed or something (which Lucas also did with the character).
His attitude also defied audience expectations because there is an assumption of traditional kinds of story design which Hollywood is increasingly ignoring due to their ideology-driven goals (and since they have all the money they need, they don't care if western audiences disapprove).
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Post by General Kenobi on Sept 30, 2018 11:53:37 GMT
Well then you'll fit in perfectly with the rest of us merry sociopaths on the internet!
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Post by Deleted on Oct 9, 2018 10:36:30 GMT
I believe him with the sequel franchise to ‘Return of the Jedi’ ‘cause Mark Hamill has said quite a bit about that like how Luke was going to get a love interest and go on to have a daughter and Leia was going to become a Jedi too and it was supposed to be filmed in the late 80s/ early 90s and they showed old footage of Mark talking about this back in 1988 or 1989 on Studio 10 but in a similar situation to ‘Ghostbusters 3’ with Bill Murray Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher wouldn’t come back for the movies which never made any sense to me considering how successful the ‘Star Wars’ films were and how many fans wanted sequels to them. It is possible there was a falling out between Carrie and Harrison with George Lucas like there was with Bill Murray and Harold Ramis in the 90s and that was why they turned down coming back until all these years later.
I am very interested in how the reaction from fans would have been if they had made the sequels to the original trilogy instead of the prequels with Mark, Harrison, Carrie and others all returning in the leading roles ‘cause a lot of people who criticise the new movies say that is what they wanted to see and dislike how they focused on Rey and Finn instead of Luke, Leia and Han but I have a feeling they will make those movies one day with new actors playing Luke, Han and Leia but what they come up with will be different than the sequel trilogy George Lucas was originally planning. I just read Disney have plans to reboot ‘Star Wars’ if Episode 9 flops and I am actually surprised they didn’t just remake ‘Star Wars’, ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ and ‘Return of the Jedi’ instead of making a sequel franchise.
Hollywood love their remakes and remaking those movies with new actors would be a lot cheaper to do than coming up with new movies and would have less risks ‘cause they are adapting a trilogy they already know people like but if they do that and they are well received it would give Disney a chance to make a sequel franchise to ‘Return of the Jedi’ keeping the new actors they have playing the roles of Luke, Leia and Han and they could even change some things and make it that Darth Vader lives at the end of ‘Return of the Jedi’ and Anakin becomes a hero again and helps his son to redeem himself for all the things he did while he was Darth Vader. I am not sure how they are going to continue with the franchise if Episode 9 is successful and they keep going with Episodes 10, 11 and 12 ‘cause both actors who play Rey and Finn have said Episode 9 will be their last unless the young boy we saw at the end of ‘The Last Jedi’ who I believe will become a Jedi is turned into the main star.
Yeah. George Lucas obviously didn’t have Luke or Leia planned as being siblings or he wouldn’t have had them kissing each other in the first two movies and I wouldn’t be surprised if Leia was originally meant end up with Luke Skywalker but as the ‘Star Wars’ movies went on George liked her with Han Solo so he decided to make them siblings to keep a connection between them ‘cause when you look back at things there was never any acknowledgement of Leia being Darth Vadar’s daughter and that was weird ‘cause he knew Luke was his son but didn’t know Leia was his sister. When Vadar had her hostage in the first movie he didn’t tell her he was her Father like he told Luke in ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ and the only thing you could really say was he let her live where he killed everybody else that got in his way and he did that ‘cause he knew Leia was his daughter.
I think there should have been more talk about Leia being Darth Vadar’s daughter too and you have to really wonder if Leia would have been as forgiving as Luke if she had been the one who went after her Father ‘cause he blew up Alderan and killed heaps of innocent people she cared for deeply and I don’t think she would have been as forgiving as Luke and probably would have wanted him dead.
But there is a big difference between I had 9-12 films all planned out from the start which he has claimed in the past which is what your initial statement seemed to fall into and him keeping an open mind to doing more after the OT once they became mega cash cows, also considering how Lucas did things I can imagine a ST was in mind only to push the toys more, I don't think it's a coincidence that those talks fell apart and we went 15 years between movies when in the interim the SW brand was still a major source of income with licensing, books, games, toys, and everything else.
I haven't heard anything about Disney rebooting SW, they don't need to thanks to the now Legends books the SW universe is deep with story to mine from other characters, which is what I think they will be doing after Ep 9, as what I have heard is Ep 9 is meant to be the end of the Skywalker Saga as it were, but they can go deep into the past with Knights of The Old Republic, we could get a Yoda series, they can make a Underworld series of crime films in the SW universe with the Hut's and all their ilk, we can get a series on the Mandalorians maybe the Mandalor/Jedi war, the rise and fall of the Sith, there is just so much to tell outside of this one family who It can make sense were the deciding factor in the universe's fate for almost a hundred years, 3 generations of the most powerful Jedi ever born but they burn bright and fade away quickly.
Nah if Disney remade the OT the fans would have rioted, some fans oppose the idea of redoing the prequels for some reason but atleast that makes sense, remake the worst part of a beloved franchise, you don't remake something people still love, especially when the hardcore fans are as mental as the SW hardcores are.
I agree about Leia should have had more focus as Vader's daughter, but I don't think the Vader not knowing in ANH is a flaw, he didn't know Luke was special in ANH either, it's only once Luke embraced the force Vader could sense him also it's intel, the hero who blew up the death stars name was going to get out there, Luke Skywalker, that's an easy way to figure something out if you are Vader & the emperor, Leia was an Organa that's not so obvious, Vader only learns of Leia through Luke also, and it would then be easy to assume who that is, Luke finds out he has a sister maybe the sister is the one female he seems to have a bond with, and who is the same age as him maybe?
But I would have liked if they had hinted at Leia's potential a few times, like she has a few spidey sense moments during the battle of endor, doesn't need to be huge but just hint at Leia being more than just human as it were.
As for Ridley & JB maybe not coming back for future SW films, well that depends, they can say what they want now but if Ridley's other outings do the same as JB's non SW projects neither will be in high demand for long, they may have to come back to SW unless they can establish themselves outside of it.
I don’t know. According to George Lucas he had six planned when he made ‘A New Hope’ and I don’t think the idea for the sequels to ‘Return of the Jedi’ came until after ‘Return of the Jedi’ but he knew he wanted to do the prequels from the start whether they turned out to be the way he envisioned or not and after the success he had with the original trilogy they were bound to happen especially after the success of the special editions in the 90s and I think if the special editions had flopped he would not have gone through with ‘The Phantom Menace’, ‘Attack of the Clones’ and ‘Revenge of the Sith’ ‘cause they aimed to renew the movies in the minds of the older and the younger audiences and see if there were people willing to go see ‘Star Wars’ movies outside of Hardcore fans. The movies went well here in cinemas and there was all this new merchandise released and I remember there being ‘Star Wars’ drinks with Anakin, Yoda and C3PO on top.
If you look back on some of the old interviews with George Lucas around the time of the prequels he seemed very happy with what he had come up with until the fans turned on ‘The Phantom Menace’ and I think he was really upset over that and you can tell with the way he talks about the prequels he thought he had come up with something all the fans would love and they didn’t. I think it was always going to be impossible for him or anybody else to do that ‘cause the original trilogy was held in such high regards by some people that nothing was ever going to be able to touch those movies and even ‘Return of the Jedi’ had its share of haters as I mentioned before but overall I think the prequels are enjoyable movies and they might not have lived up to fan expectations but I am glad they were made.
You bring up a good point about Darth Vader not knowing that Luke Skywalker was special until after he embraced the forks and learned how to eat properly () and it would have been easy for him to find out who Luke’s sister was but maybe he did know all along and that was why he didn’t kill her in ‘A New Hope’ ‘cause most other people that crossed his path ended up dead and he even killed a lot of the people who worked for him when they let him down. In ‘Revenge of the Sith’ he knew Padmae was pregnant but he didn’t know she was going to have twins since that was not revealed until after he had gone to the dark side so he would have always known there was a possibility he had a son or daughter out there but wouldn’t have known who it was. That brings me to another question of how Palpatine knew Padmae was dead ‘cause she died giving birth and that was at the end of the movie.
Was it ‘cause he had the force and he could sense when a person had died or did he have somebody else on the inside working for him and sending him out messages ‘cause it seemed odd that he knew when he wasn’t there with them to see her die.. It would have been good if they hinted more at Leia being a Jedi and perhaps had a scene where Leia dropped her gun and couldn’t reach it and she used the force to bring it back to her and they could have had that happen before Luke told her she was his sister and had her say she already knew and had the Force too.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 9, 2018 10:38:12 GMT
I'm not sure that there was a falling out between Carrie and Harrison; it's not impossible, especially given their purported sexual history, but I think it was more the initial shock of popularity playing these types of roles and being young and not wanting to be pigeonholed. It's at least somewhat different now than it was then for actors; I'd like to think actors aren't as likely to get typed cast as they were then. With a lot of these iconic characters, you have actors taking on roles for something they didn't think would amount to much, but would at least be a paycheck; and then suddenly it becomes the defining point of their career, and not always for the better. You've got Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner spending years trying to distance themselves from the roles that made them famous with Star Trek; and if memory serves neither Harrison or Carrie really knew what they were signing up for when they were offered Star Wars. Harrison Ford especially has always struck me as someone who sees himself as "too cool for school" when it comes to the more surreal fantasy based movies, even though he's several. If I recall correctly, word was that he would have preferred to have been killed off at the end of The Empire Strikes Back. Somehow Lucas managed to get them all under some pretty solid, but one-sided contracts; which is how the Christmas Special came about... I was not at all surprised he got killed off in Force Awakens, and imagine that may have likely been a precondition for his return to the franchise. No. I meant between Carrie Fisher and George Lucas and Harrison Ford and George Lucas and I have heard Harrison Ford wasn’t a big fan of the ‘Star Wars’ and his character, Han Solo and he preferred Indiana Jones more and his dislike of the movies was most likely one of the main reasons he refused to come back for sequels to ‘Return of the Jedi’ for a long time and there was probably also the fear of being typecast as you mentioned which happens to a lot of actors. Apart from his role as the Joker in animation and the Arkham games Mark Hamill didn’t go on to do many bigger things after ‘Return of the Jedi’ and I heard he did have some big roles offered to him but lost them due to alcohol abuse and Mark went through a dark period in his career where his career went down the toilet.
It is funny you mention typecasting ‘cause I think you are definitely right with Leonard Nimoy and he did have a few other roles in movies and TV shows people knew him for and one of his last ones was as William Bell in ‘Fringe’ but I think William Shatner managed to do it and sure, a lot of fans still see him as Captain Kirk but ‘TJ Hooker’ and ‘Boston Legal’ were very popular shows and when he was on ‘Sunrise’ last week to promote his upcoming Australian tour the first thing they asked him about was Denny Crane and said ‘Boston Legal’ was one of the most popular TV shows of all time and I think he is always going to be remembered for that role now too and not many actors can say they had a really successful role like that decades after the role that made them a star.
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Post by stargazer1682 on Oct 9, 2018 14:34:42 GMT
I'm not sure that there was a falling out between Carrie and Harrison; it's not impossible, especially given their purported sexual history, but I think it was more the initial shock of popularity playing these types of roles and being young and not wanting to be pigeonholed. It's at least somewhat different now than it was then for actors; I'd like to think actors aren't as likely to get typed cast as they were then. With a lot of these iconic characters, you have actors taking on roles for something they didn't think would amount to much, but would at least be a paycheck; and then suddenly it becomes the defining point of their career, and not always for the better. You've got Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner spending years trying to distance themselves from the roles that made them famous with Star Trek; and if memory serves neither Harrison or Carrie really knew what they were signing up for when they were offered Star Wars. Harrison Ford especially has always struck me as someone who sees himself as "too cool for school" when it comes to the more surreal fantasy based movies, even though he's several. If I recall correctly, word was that he would have preferred to have been killed off at the end of The Empire Strikes Back. Somehow Lucas managed to get them all under some pretty solid, but one-sided contracts; which is how the Christmas Special came about... I was not at all surprised he got killed off in Force Awakens, and imagine that may have likely been a precondition for his return to the franchise. No. I meant between Carrie Fisher and George Lucas and Harrison Ford and George Lucas and I have heard Harrison Ford wasn’t a big fan of the ‘Star Wars’ and his character, Han Solo and he preferred Indiana Jones more and his dislike of the movies was most likely one of the main reasons he refused to come back for sequels to ‘Return of the Jedi’ for a long time and there was probably also the fear of being typecast as you mentioned which happens to a lot of actors. Apart from his role as the Joker in animation and the Arkham games Mark Hamill didn’t go on to do many bigger things after ‘Return of the Jedi’ and I heard he did have some big roles offered to him but lost them due to alcohol abuse and Mark went through a dark period in his career where his career went down the toilet.
It is funny you mention typecasting ‘cause I think you are definitely right with Leonard Nimoy and he did have a few other roles in movies and TV shows people knew him for and one of his last ones was as William Bell in ‘Fringe’ but I think William Shatner managed to do it and sure, a lot of fans still see him as Captain Kirk but ‘TJ Hooker’ and ‘Boston Legal’ were very popular shows and when he was on ‘Sunrise’ last week to promote his upcoming Australian tour the first thing they asked him about was Denny Crane and said ‘Boston Legal’ was one of the most popular TV shows of all time and I think he is always going to be remembered for that role now too and not many actors can say they had a really successful role like that decades after the role that made them a star. Yeah, but TJ Hooker didn't come along until '82, with Star Trek ending in '69. That's a long time for an actor to go between substantial gigs. I've read that Shatner had a pretty rocky go immediately after Star Trek ended; possibly living out of his car for a period. He had a smattering of guest roles in the intervening years, a few movies (hard to say how big the role was, or how popular the movie at the time, but arguably nothing that did more than keep his career afloat). And yes, Boston Legal was big, but that's decades from either TJ Hooker or Star Trek; and arguably after he had already stabilized his career and established his brand. It's not like Shatner's star had begun to fade again and Boston Legal brought it back; not like say, Robert Downey Jr. taking on the Iron Man role.
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Post by General Kenobi on Oct 10, 2018 11:39:11 GMT
Things got really weird for William Shatner for awhile after Star Trek.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 27, 2018 10:42:55 GMT
No. I meant between Carrie Fisher and George Lucas and Harrison Ford and George Lucas and I have heard Harrison Ford wasn’t a big fan of the ‘Star Wars’ and his character, Han Solo and he preferred Indiana Jones more and his dislike of the movies was most likely one of the main reasons he refused to come back for sequels to ‘Return of the Jedi’ for a long time and there was probably also the fear of being typecast as you mentioned which happens to a lot of actors. Apart from his role as the Joker in animation and the Arkham games Mark Hamill didn’t go on to do many bigger things after ‘Return of the Jedi’ and I heard he did have some big roles offered to him but lost them due to alcohol abuse and Mark went through a dark period in his career where his career went down the toilet.
It is funny you mention typecasting ‘cause I think you are definitely right with Leonard Nimoy and he did have a few other roles in movies and TV shows people knew him for and one of his last ones was as William Bell in ‘Fringe’ but I think William Shatner managed to do it and sure, a lot of fans still see him as Captain Kirk but ‘TJ Hooker’ and ‘Boston Legal’ were very popular shows and when he was on ‘Sunrise’ last week to promote his upcoming Australian tour the first thing they asked him about was Denny Crane and said ‘Boston Legal’ was one of the most popular TV shows of all time and I think he is always going to be remembered for that role now too and not many actors can say they had a really successful role like that decades after the role that made them a star. Yeah, but TJ Hooker didn't come along until '82, with Star Trek ending in '69. That's a long time for an actor to go between substantial gigs. I've read that Shatner had a pretty rocky go immediately after Star Trek ended; possibly living out of his car for a period. He had a smattering of guest roles in the intervening years, a few movies (hard to say how big the role was, or how popular the movie at the time, but arguably nothing that did more than keep his career afloat). And yes, Boston Legal was big, but that's decades from either TJ Hooker or Star Trek; and arguably after he had already stabilized his career and established his brand. It's not like Shatner's star had begun to fade again and Boston Legal brought it back; not like say, Robert Downey Jr. taking on the Iron Man role. No. It didn’t and I didn’t know William Shatner hit rock bottom after ‘Star Trek’ ended and was living out of his car for a while but I have read about some other famous actors doing similar things during a low point of their careers when all the roles they were getting offered dried up and it goes to show how underpaid TV actors were back then ‘cause someone like William Shatner who was in a popular TV show like ‘Star Trek’ shouldn’t have been struggling with money. We talked about this before on another thread and I am often surprised how little some actors earned from being in TV shows that many consider classics and among the greatest shows of all time and I don’t know if it was the same for actors in movies too but looking at how much some actors earn now for TV shows I don’t think they would be able to get away with it now especially with reruns.
Although, there has long been a wage gap in both the movie and TV industries when it comes to how much a female actor gets paid for a leading role compared to how much a male actors earns despite how successful the TV show they are in is and looking at a recent lists of the top earning actors there are actresses in far more successful shows that are paid significantly less than some actors in smaller shows that don’t even get half the ratings their shows are getting and I haven’t seen the figures but I heard it was worse back in the 90s and early 00s and Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jennifer Garner, Melissa Joan Hart and Alyssa Milano for example got paid significantly less for their roles in Buffy, Charmed, Alias and Sabrina the Teenage Witch than a number of the male actors in TV shows around the same time that weren’t bringing in high ratings and are rarely talked about now.
A lot of these things are far more publicly known now than they were years ago which is why we see them being talked about more and my Auntie didn’t know a lot of actors in her favourite TV shows in the 60s and 70s were screwed over until years later ‘cause they kept that kind of thing hush, hush to people outside of the industry and yes, I know all about William Shatner’s music career () and he has a new Christmas album coming out this year and William Shatner’s ‘Rocket Man’ and others are still played on radio and music channels here so he must have been doing something right there too.
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Post by stargazer1682 on Oct 27, 2018 14:14:19 GMT
I was just reading an article about Suzanne Summers and her firing from Three's Company back in the 80s, because she asked for a pay raise; which I was generally familiar with. It was at a point in the series where she was making about $30,000 an episode, which was after several raises over the four or five years the show had been on, and was a number 1 show; and she asked for $150,000 per show, which was what her co-star John Ritter was making and instead they wrote her off.
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Post by General Kenobi on Oct 27, 2018 18:36:09 GMT
Yeah, I've heard about that. What a dirty thing to do. And I don't think the show eve quite recovered from firing her.
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Post by stargazer1682 on Oct 27, 2018 18:56:15 GMT
Yeah, I've heard about that. What a dirty thing to do. And I don't think the show eve quite recovered from firing her. Yeah, then they screwed over Joyce DeWitt, planning a spin-off with John's character; if I recall correctly they did it all behind her back, even lying to her about what was happening.
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Post by dazz on Oct 27, 2018 21:28:25 GMT
I was just reading an article about Suzanne Summers and her firing from Three's Company back in the 80s, because she asked for a pay raise; which I was generally familiar with. It was at a point in the series where she was making about $30,000 an episode, which was after several raises over the four or five years the show had been on, and was a number 1 show; and she asked for $150,000 per show, which was what her co-star John Ritter was making and instead they wrote her off. From what I just read it may have been more than that though, it wasn't just the raise but she wanted 10% of the shows profits, which if that's the same as what Ritter had I can easily see a studio being like no no no, I mean $300k an episode for 2 stars that's like $830k in todays money plus 20% of the shows profits on top, fuck that, also may have been personality issue because I read Somers wasn't on good terms with Ritter & Dewitt at the time after faking an injury, she didn't speak to either for decades after the show, and wouldn't work with them in her final year from what I read.
Still bullshit to prioritise Ritter over her if it was just because he's a guy, but if he were the more vital part of the show which I dunno if he was I never saw the show myself then I can get it, but shit like that also happens just because of timing, like maybe Ritter was the hard arse to deal with and Somers wasn't until she was, so they splurged to make Ritter happy only to find she wanted equal pay or better and they already overspent, happened in wrestling back in the 80's with JCP, Midnight Express & Cornette renegotiate their deals when Crockett thought he had money and signed them for like $220k a year downside a piece, then when Tully & Arn of the Horsemen who were bigger draws came to their deal he figured out he was in theh ole so couldn't offer them a big contract so the Midnight were higher paid than the Horsemen's tag team, and outside of Dusty, Flair & the Road Warriors maybe one or 2 other singles guys were the highest paid guys on the roster.
One thing though pretty obvious if you want a raise don't ask for an insane one unless the goal is ask high settle low but at a level higher than they would have initially offered, demanding 5 times your current salary plus 10% of the shows profit, and sticking to it may have been a bad strategy man or woman.
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Post by stargazer1682 on Oct 27, 2018 22:35:57 GMT
One thing though pretty obvious if you want a raise don't ask for an insane one unless the goal is ask high settle low but at a level higher than they would have initially offered, demanding 5 times your current salary plus 10% of the shows profit, and sticking to it may have been a bad strategy man or woman. There's the crux of the issue though, I would say; in one breath you essentially say 'bid high, accept low,' which I agree is the heart of negotiation - but did they offer a compromise and she wouldn't budge? Not by any account I've seen to date, though not impossible. But then with the next breath you question the starting point for those negotiations, when it's to some degree on par with what a colleague who has been part of the show for just as long is making; and that mindset, with respect, is part of the problem. It's of the nature of her claims of being smered as being difficult and asking too much. She may have a difficult personality, I don't know. Was John Ritter a greater asset to the show? That's impossible to quantify and the definition of debatable. He was an unquestionable talent, and arguably had the better career afterwards, but it was called " Three's Company," and Suzanne was one of those titular three for the first four successful seasons of the show. 10% may have gone beyond the pale, but it may have been a starting point for negotiation. 5x pay increase sounds unreasonable until you factor in that amount was the same as another lead on the show. Put another way, she was making 1/5 of someone else, for roughly the same amount of work. And that's not a fifth of the pie comprised of the leads, that's a fifth of one of the other thirds that makes up the full ensemble. So was John really putting in five times more work than Suzanne? That seems doubtful. Take into account that the show floundered when they tried to replace Suzanne with one generic blonde after the next, and that a spin-off that only featured John did not have nearly the same reception the original had goes to show that this was far from a one man show. Would all three of leads taking home an equal payday based on John's salary put a hefty price tag on the show? Maybe, though even adjusted for inflation isn't that wildly out of proportion to some other successful sitcoms. More importantly, that's not any of the actor's problems. The production company sets the standard of the value of the performers based on the profitability of the show; and they either over valued John or undervalued his co-stars, but the onus is on them to determine what's equitable.
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Post by dazz on Oct 27, 2018 23:59:03 GMT
You would have to imagine they tried other offers as she, again from what I read, stayed on the show for another season to finish off her contract but in a greatly reduced role where the actress didn't need to work with the other stars, you would have to assume if they kept bringing her in, paying her $30k an episode for what is just supposedly a 1 minute scene, if they did that then they must have wanted to work with her somehow.
But if what you said is right and they just tried replacing her with a generic blonde replacement maybe they did undervalue her and think she wasn't as important to the show until it was too late, I don't think the success of the show after or it's spin off matters as much as proof as lots of shows fail once the formula gets monkeyed with.
There's two sides though it's not on her or anyone else to be looking out for the cost, get what you can get, cant blame anyone for that, but at the same time the producers or whoever else their job isn't to give her what she wants, it's to do the show and make it as profitable as possible, those 2 agendas are always in conflict, it wasn't from what I can tell like they conned her out of money owed, they just refused to pay her what she wanted for additional seasons, so they reduced her workload for her final year paid her the full pay per ep she had negotiated prior for it and then went on their way after.
But the show went what 8 seasons and a spin off, I dunno maybe they didn't undervalue her as they kept the show going for years without her, like they didn't then replace her character with another male actor who they then paid $100k to an episode which would clearly be an indicator of fuck you we could have paid you this but your a woman and we didn't want to, if the reason for it was just gender imo it's all unfair and bullshit but if it was more just nah it's business then I don't have a problem with it is all, god knows which it is, I just like playing devils advocate, especially when it's something that will be too easy to be one sided just because makes for more fun talks is all.
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Post by stargazer1682 on Oct 28, 2018 0:30:56 GMT
They replaced her not once, but twice; Jenilee Harrison played Cindy Snow (Suzanne's character's cousin) for 27 episodes, then Priscilla Barnes as Terri Alden for the last three seasons.
Since Suzanne was probably still under contract during at least part of season 5, odds are the studio had no choice but to put her in X number of episodes or have to pay out some penalty or default amount that would be at least as much as just paying her to do the episodes. Putting her in the teaser and paying her the $30,000 would probably be the path of least resistance financially.
One might be more inclined to believe that the producers were trying keep profits high, if they weren't literally paying someone else doing roughly the same job five times as much. If you're that concerned about the budget, you're going to give everyone as little as possible. The push back to that are when employees know the value of the product and leveraging their contribution to it. The producers, for whatever reason, exponentially valued John Ritter more than his co-stars. To what degree is debatable, but five times more valuable does not pass the smell test. And they didn't even "monkey" with the formula, they genuinely appeared to believe that so long as it was John Ritter and two blonde and brunette women, everything would be the same regardless who that blonde woman was.
Mind you, by Joyce Dewitt's account, they intentionally went out of their way to keep plans for the spin-off secret from her, since they weren't going to involve her. And, when they tried to spin-off the original landlord characters, the Ropers, they purportedly promised to bring them back to the original series if the spin-off failed Ed; as the actors we're naturally concerned about being out of job if they tried going on to something else and it didn't pan out. But when their spin-off failed, they weren't brought back as regulars like they told. So they're are a few stories of some fairly shady shit going on behind the scenes of that show.
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Post by dazz on Oct 28, 2018 3:25:54 GMT
That's what I mean though they reduced her role, made it easier for her not to deal with the other cast she wasn't getting along with to like a days work per episode if that and paid her however many 100's of 1000's of $ to do so rather than to just say fuck you heres your money now fuck off, they kept the relationship open, they likely could of done what WWE does with their no compete clauses pay her for the season keep her off of TV unable to negotiate of work on shit during the time she would be working with them to create a cooldown period where people didn't care about her as much, instead as limited as it was they kept her on TV for another season knowing she was going to be leaving at the end of it.
It's not like paying out deals to get people out of their hair is a rare thing in Hollywood or anything.
As for the Ritter thing could be like I said just a thing of they knew the numbers this is what they need for the numbers to hit for the network to be happy, maybe Ritter was the squeakier wheel so they locked him down, he gets in first and he gets them when their pockets are full and takes them for what he can, she comes in after but Ritters already had the excess cash, and maybe they thought ok Ritter is a pain he's going to want X, Somers isn't as bad she'll probably be good with this and so forth, they fucked up obviously but it's one of those things where it doesn't necessarily have to be malicious or be anything other than based on those actors as people, rather than their gender.
I did read about that shit with the other series sounds like those guys may have just been arseholes, Dewitt also didn't like them from what I read, they hid the spin off for Ritter from her but she said she doubts she would have wanted to be apart of it anyway having to deal with those guys again, funnily what I read is she thought she was replaceable, and had they given Ritter another character like hers for the spin off it may have worked better, that it was the loss of that character type and their interaction which hurt the other show.
I read because of this stuff about how the guy who played JR on Dallas held up the show for a raise during the who shot JR hiatus, that he got them to up him to $100k an episode but that's all because they told him basically take the money or we will replace you and say JR had plastic surgery, which he accepted and said basically basically I got all that I could, we are all overpaid but when the opportunity is there get what you can, which I think is a great way to look at it, cant blame Somers for wanting what she wanted, but that works on the flipside, you get what you can out of them, at the same time they get you for as cheap as possible.
Also fuck knows maybe this all came down to the agents or the shit where a specific person liked Ritter for whatever reason, I mean people do shit for odd reasons, using wrestling again Jim Cornette after their $225k deals ran out and TBS now owned the company negotiated new deals, they were offered $100k a piece, he wanted the Midnight Express to get $150k because they wrestled he just managed, but the guy in charge just kept upping Jim's money first before he would up the teams, so in the end Jim got $150k and the team got like $137.5k, the excuse being Jim also did a hotline and announcing on B shows, then Jim got taken off announcing and off the hotline right after, so he got $12.5k more than his guys for no reason, and by not negotiating for more money for himself got a $50k raise from his initial offer, I mean fuck knows maybe Jim Herd was the one who negotiated Ritter's contract also.
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Post by stargazer1682 on Oct 28, 2018 6:11:06 GMT
People can speculate on any number of infinite possibilities, but the only ones that matter are the ones that are probable. It seems unlikely that John raised a fuss or was the proverbial squeaky wheel. I've never heard anything bad about him as an actor or a person; and in spite of his passing, if he had been a jerk, to any degree, people would still come out and say so.
Like I said, it's more likely Suzanne had a clause in her contact requiring a minimum number of episodes or they'd have to pay her; and in assessment of better outcomes, paying for her doing something is arguably preferable to paying her for doing nothing. Especially if that clause requires the show to pay more than what they'd pay for her to just be in the episodes. That alone suggests she wasn't such a nightmare as it being worth paying to wash their hands of her, yet not so valued as to give her anything more than the bare minimum to be considered part of an episode; or hesitate to replace her completely at the first opportunity.
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Post by General Kenobi on Oct 28, 2018 9:32:18 GMT
Wow. I never heard that before. What a lousy thing to do.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 11, 2018 10:54:13 GMT
I was just reading an article about Suzanne Summers and her firing from Three's Company back in the 80s, because she asked for a pay raise; which I was generally familiar with. It was at a point in the series where she was making about $30,000 an episode, which was after several raises over the four or five years the show had been on, and was a number 1 show; and she asked for $150,000 per show, which was what her co-star John Ritter was making and instead they wrote her off. Wow. I didn’t know that stargazer but that is pathetic and I am surprised it wasn’t Suzanne that quit the show after they underpaid her for that many years. I mean she wasn’t even earning half of what John Ritter was getting paid per episode and I am curious over how much Richard Kline got for being in the show and if he was being higher paid than Suzanne too ‘cause if he was that is a real joke but I sadly wouldn’t be surprised ‘cause it still happens now and you only have to look at how much some the highest paid actors get compared to the highest paid actresses. A lot of the actresses don’t even get paid half the amount their male counterparts get even when they have more successful movies that year and male actors who are in complete bombs can still end up getting paid way higher than them.
Do you know how much Suzanne got paid when she was on ‘Step By Step’ and if she got paid similar to Patrick Duffy? That show was fairly popular here too and a lot of people I know used to watch it.
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