Oscars might be nice, but TV is where the dough's at – especially for Hollywood's biggest names.
Three-time Academy Award winner Meryl Streep is set to earn $US825,000 ($1.1 million) per episode for her work in JJ Abrams' upcoming Warner Bros TV mini series The Nix, the Hollywood Reporter notes.
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Meryl Streep gets millions for TV Series
As the television market gets competitive, actors and producers are scooping huge salaries.
Streep's paycheque on the series - based on the New York Times bestseller by Nathan Hill, about a college professor who reunites with his hippie mother decades after she abandoned him - is part of a growing trend, fuelled by competition between Netflix, HBO and other streaming sites, that's wooing A-listers to the small screen, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
"Many on the network side blame Netflix, which will spend upward of $US6 billion on original content this year and which kicked off the spree in 2013 with a $US100 million commitment for two seasons of Kevin Spacey's House Of Cards," the Hollywood Reporter notes. "But now it's not just Netflix."
Streep's former Deer Hunter co-star Robert De Niro, for example, is making similar coin on an upcoming series from Silver Linings Playbook director David O. Russell, earning $US750,000 ($1.01 million) per episode. The series is reportedly a 20-parter, so you do the math.
While the salaries on streaming's original content may be climbing, stars on already-established hit favourites continue to reap in the most bucks, the Hollywood Reporter says.
And for proof, just look towards The Big Bang Theory.
On a list of the "world's highest paid actors" released by Forbes earlier this year, the show's four male stars - Jim Parsons, Johnny Galecki, Kunal Nayyar and Simon Helberg - took out the top four spots, with "Friends-like" salaries ranging from $US22 million to $US25.5 million. The cast - including star Kaley Cuoco - have famously been earning $US1 million ($1.35 million) per episode since 2014.
The "top-tier" cast members of Game Of Thrones, meanwhile - that's Peter Dinklage, Kit Harington, Emilia Clarke, Lena Headey, and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau - also signed a contract this year that will see their salaries for the show's concluding seventh and eighth seasons jump to over $US500,000 ($677,000) per episode.