Even Whopping $110M Could Not Bring Jerry Seinfeld Back For Seinfeld S10
Seinfeld was a phenomenon back in the day, and to this day many people claim that there's never been a show like this either prior to or after Seinfeld, but despite the insane offer, Jerry declined and the series never got a season 10.
The Seinfeld show is legendary, and this is no understatement.
When it was airing back in the 90s, it pioneered in many areas, and is still unmatched in some — at least, according to the most loyal fans.
Seinfeld was making a huge bank, and it's no wonder the NBC executives wanted to make more of it… Jack Welch, General Electric's CEO (GE was NBC's parent company back then), wanted that, too.
He ordered the executives to get at least one more season whatever it would've taken, and the offer Jerry Seinfeld received from them was nuts: it was far above any other TV series had ever made by that point in time.
When the show only started, Seinfeld was making $20k per episode, and for the second and third seasons, it doubled to $40k.
But with the show's overwhelming popularity, just doubling it wasn't enough: in seasons 4, 5, and 6 Jerry Seinfeld was already making $100k per episode.
After that, it only got crazier. Seasons 7 and 8 saw him get $500k per episode — five times more than before.
That was an unprecedented pay jump in the 90s, but not the last one in Seinfeld history, because for the ninth season, Jerry was making $1M for each episode.
This was insane in itself. No one was making this kind of money off playing in a TV show then, but Seinfeld's success was well-worth such a paycheck for its lead actor in the eyes of the executives.
When it became known that Jerry Seinfeld was not interested in continuing with the show, the NBC executives set off to break yet one more record with their new offer: $5M per episode in season 10.
Not only did they offer Seinfeld $5M per episode but they also guaranteed him a 22-episode season, which would've summed up to Jerry getting a whopping $110M paycheck at the end of season 10.
This kind of offer was totally unheard of, and the execs were sure that Seinfeld would accept it: no TV actor would've declined such an insane sum of money.
What happened next was perfectly summed up by one of the executives: "When Jerry said he was turning it down, Jack just went numb."
We can totally understand Mr. Welch on this one as we've had the same reaction, to be completely honest.
Source: Celebrity Net Worth