he standoff between The Simpsons voice cast and 20th Century Fox TV is finally over. After months of tense negotiations a deal has been reached at the voice cast will return. Each member of the main voice cast (including Dan Castellaneta, Hank Azaria, and Nancy Cartwright) will now be paid $400,000 per episode. It’s certainly not a bad hall at all, especially considering that voice recording only takes about a day or two of work per episode.

The cast had been petitioning for $500,000 an episode, but obviously didn’t get that. Still, it’s hard to complain considering that everyone still received a $100,000 per-episode raise from last year. In addition to the voice acting pay increase, Dan Castellaneta (who plays Homer and dozens of other characters, plus contributes the occasional script) has been granted a consulting producer credit for his consistent behind-the-scenes work on the show and will probably get a little extra cash for his troubles. Now that the negotiations have cleared, the cast has returned to work and will begin reading and recording material this week.