The dystopian sci-fi series Westworld will not get a fifth season, but the main cast of the series will be paid for Season 5

The dystopian sci-fi series Westworld will not get a fifth season, but the main cast of the series will be paid for Season 5 regardless of the fact that it will not be produced.

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The main cast reportedly had pay-or-play contracts for Season 5. The actors’ options were exercised sometime last year before Season 4 premiered (production of that season had been halted due to the pandemic). The cast may have also renegotiated their contracts at that time. The move is not unusual. Networks sometimes pay to secure a cast before a renewal decision is made, mainly if the group features big names who would be hard to reassemble without contracts.

Evan Rachel Wood, Thandiwe Newton, Jeffrey Wright, Ed Harris, and Aaron Paul make up the majority of the cast of Westworld. The original cast members Wood, Newton, Wright, and Harris had their pay significantly increased after Season 2 to roughly $250,000 per episode in Season 3. Paul started out in Season 3.

The estimated total of the Season 5 cast’s unpaid salary is between $10 million and $15 million. Westworld’s third season budget was $100 million, or around $10 million for each episode, thus a fifth season would have cost HBO more than $80 million. This is not a tiny sum of money, but overall Westworld is not a cheap programme!