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13.  Stranger Things and the year in TV renegotiations   

It’s only the first week of January, but we might have our most interesting TV renegotiation of the year. Multiple sources tell me the sprawling cast of Stranger Things recently closed new deals to return for the show’s fifth and final season. And, as might be expected for Netflix’s most-watched show, the dealmaking was complicated and the principals got big raises. 

As often happens in big TV renegotiations, the cast went in together (or almost together), and with about 20 series regulars (!), Netflix created four separate tiers with which to negotiate:

• Tier 1:  the adult stars who have been with the show since the first season. (Ryder was the biggest name initially, and her value has carried her and Harbour through subsequent renegotiations);   
• Tier 2: The four original boys—Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Noah Schnapp, and Finn Wolfhard—plus later arrival Sadie Sink, who lobbied hard and was added to this tier;
• Tier 3: The regular teens, including Natalia Dyer, Maya Hawke, Charlie Heaton, and Joe Keery;
• Tier 4: Everybody else.

There’s an intriguing backstory here. Netflix business affairs V.P. Rob Natter made an initial tier-by-tier proposal. It was big, but the negotiating teams—tons of talent lawyers were involved here, including Karl Austen, Harris Hartman, Joel McKuin, Greg Slewett, and more, with agencies in the background—argued that Netflix technically didn’t have the original stars under contract at all because deals for the show from 2015 violated California’s 7-year rule, which prohibits personal services contracts from extending beyond that 7 year benchmark. (Apparently previous renegotiations did not result in new contracts but rather addendums to the existing deals.) Netflix disputed that argument, but perhaps not coincidentally the offers increased significantly. Netflix is declining to comment, but I’m told the salary numbers for Season 5 are as follows:

• Tier 1: $9.5 million
• Tier 2: Just over $7 million 
• Tier 3: Just over $6 million
• Tier 4: Much less 

That’s per person for services in eight episodes. (Technically, Netflix is paying for 10 episodes, but that’s so the per-episode fee comes down to allow the company to argue in negotiations for other shows that it didn’t go above X amount per episode on Stranger Things, its biggest show. It’s also a cushion in case they go long on episodes.) And the above money also includes payments for the supersized shoots on Season 4, which ended up airing several movie-length episodes. Just for comparison, Ryder and Harbour made $350,000 per episode for Season 3, or $2.8 million. 

Individually, these numbers aren’t actually that huge for stars of such a massive show in its fifth season. But if you do the math all in, with this number of actors, that’s a pretty pricey season of TV even before spending a penny on production. And that’s not including breakout star Millie Bobby Brown, who has a separate (and ridiculously lucrative) overall deal with Netflix, where she makes the Enola Holmes movies and will star in the Russo brothers’ next pricey opus, The Electric State.

Not bad for a show where the kids started at $25,000 an episode. If you’re involved in a bigger aggregate cast renegotiation this year, I’d love to hear about it.