LA Weekly "Deadline Hollywood" columnist Nikki Finke has a look at the negotiations between Fox and The Simpsons' voice actors. Hilariously, Fox execs at one point threatened to replace all of them.

A flurry of small press snippets, obviously planted, began portraying the actors as ungrateful SOBs who were striking, walking off the job and refusing to attend readings because they weren’t being paid gazillions for their so-called one-hour-a-week’s worth of work. This followed a series of threats that the actors would all be replaced...After all, they had started on The Simpsons earning just $3,000 an episode. (One insider groused, “The guy who gets the coffee at Fox gets paid more than that.”)

Trust us, the guy who gets the coffee at Fox would strangle his boss for 3K a week...actually, most of them would do it for a lot less.

• Deadline Hollywood: Poker with The Simpsons [LA Weekly]

Contact information for this author is not available.