'The Big Bang Theory' Season 8 Premiere: $1 Million Per Episode Expected For Jim Parsons, Kaley Cuoco, Johnny Galecki As Contract Negotations End [VIDEO]
The stars of CBS' massively successful sitcom The Big Bang Theory are about to receive a huge pay raise as contract negotiations conclude.
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Jim Parsons (who plays Sheldon), Johnny Galecki (Leonard) and Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting (Penny) are each slated to make in the ballpark of $1 million per episode of the sitcom, according to a Monday report by Deadline. This is a whopping $700,000 raise from the $300,000 each of the three actors was making most recently. Each actor reportedly signed a three-year deal, which is 72 episodes altogether.
Not only that, the trio is allegedly slated to receive production deals and a bigger stake in the sitcom's back end. Deadline is projecting that each of them could be receiving up to $100 million each overall for the three years.
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Parsons, Galecki and Cuoco-Sweeting join Mayim Bialik (Amy) and Melissa Rauch (Bernadette) as having signed on for Season 8, with only Simon Helberg (Howard) and Kunal Nayyar (Raj) remaining. The Deadline report says they are close to signing deals ahead of Wednesday's planned table read for the first episode of Season 8.
With Parsons, Galecki and Cuoco-Sweeting making an expected $1 million per episode, that puts them in the category of NBC's popular sitcom Friends, with each of the show's cast members receiving $1 million per episode in its final seasons. However, it is not certain if Helberg, Nayyar, Bialik and Rauch will ever reach those heights.
The Big Bang Theory premieres its eighth season of Monday, Sept. 22 at 8 p.m. on CBS.
