Days of Our Lives Chatter

Years ago, in my Panama tour (mid-80s)....for some odd reason, I got into soap operas.....namely, 'Days of Our Lives'.  This is when video-tape rentals were big and you could show up on a Friday after work, and rent an entire week's worth of the show to watch over Saturday and Sunday. 

At the end of that tour....I quit the habit, and frankly didn't care what happened to 'Patch' and 'Kayla'. 

I noticed in today's news that Days of Our Lives had this little meeting with the contract folks, and they basically released ALL of the cast (probably up to around 30 people in the primary group, and another twenty who would occasionally show up for some storyline).

Yep....the contracts ended. 

So what the business side says is that they have canned episodes to actually carry the show up to mid-summer 2020.  Normally, they'd restart the shooting around Feb/Mar timeframe, but they aren't saying much.  The bosses say.....they'd really like to continue, but the idea is....the cast would have to come in and talk over their contracts. 

My humble guess is that the production folks would like to cut the contracts by some magic amount (maybe 20-percent).  My other humble guess is that at least one-third of the cast will walk away and refuse to work for less. 

Some folks (journalists who chat over the show).....suggest that maybe the entire cast would walk away, and they'd just go hire 30 new people off the street, and reset the whole storyline.  Could they even reset the city of 'Salem'?   Maybe.

I often wondered why you had to do the series in Hollywood.  You could have picked some southern town, and just set up a production warehouse, and hire forty-odd wannabe-actors for various roles.  You could have cut the costs by fifty-percent. 

So, bold new world coming to Days of Our Lives.....or maybe even the end of the series entirely.