Is Days of Our Lives ending? Cast reportedly released from contracts
According to a new report coming in via TVLine, the producers of Days have released the entirety of their cast from their current contracts, and with the show going on an indefinite hiatus at the end of the month, there’s no telling whether or not the series will return. The site notes that NBC and Sony Pictures TV are negotiating in order to bring the series back, but that could suddenly come with some complications.
So what is going on here? A source notes that the actor deals are with Corday Productions, and it actually seems like this could be a tactic in order to pressure the cast into taking deals for less overall money. Here is what one TVLine “insider’ had to say:
“It’s actually a shrewd — if cynical — business move … If Days gets picked up, [Corday] can offer the actors new contacts at a reduced rate and with a ‘take-it-or-leave’ it attitude. Worst case scenario, they lose half their cast. Best case scenario [for Corday], everyone agrees to return at a lower salary.”
It’s possible that Days of Our Lives is going through an unfortunate consequence of the modern streaming era — there are fewer people invested in watching shows when they’re on and with more competition, there’s less of a desire to stay hooked on daytime soaps in general. Cutting costs may be one of the only ways to keep the show profitable, though this reported way in which to do so feels a little extreme. Couldn’t the producers just cut a few characters, rather than going into some sort of extreme bargaining route where they lose a lot of people over salary negotiations?
In the end, we’d say that the future of Days of Our Lives is very much in flux — there’s plenty of time for some final decisions to be made, but we’ll have to wait and see how the entire process ends up playing out.
Do you want to see Days of Our Lives continue at NBC?
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