Deadline reports that CBS’s long-running monster hit The Big Bang Theory is closing in on a deal that would secure two more seasons of the high-ratings nerd comedy that the network so clearly craves. The deal would lock the show’s cast in through a potential twelfth season, airing some time in 2018.
The most interesting thing about the negotiations is that all five of the show’s original stars—Johnny Galecki, Kaley Cuoco, Jim Parsons, Simon Helberg, and Kunal Nayyar—will now be receiving equal pay, somewhere in the neighborhood of the $1 million per episode that Galecki, Cuoco, and Parsons were already getting. That suggests that CBS took Nayyar’s hints last year about upcoming contract negotiations seriously, bumping him and Helberg up to the same payment tier as the rest of the original cast.
This year’s negotiations—which also folded in discussions of the show’s planned prequel series, Sheldon—reportedly went far smoother than the ones from three years ago, when disagreements forced a production delay on the series’ eighth season.