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The Big Bang Theory season 11 finds new showrunner

As Steven Molaro heads up the Young Sheldon writers room

Jack Shepherd
Tuesday 01 August 2017 09:18 EDT
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Come November later this year and The Big Bang Theory spin-off Young Sheldon will finally touch down, showrunner Steven Molaro busy working on the show.

However, due to the extra workload, Molaro has been unable to return to the original series, a new showrunner being brought in.

According to Variety, Steve Holland, longtime executive producer and writer on Big Bang, will take over for the upcoming eleventh season.

Molaro will continue to oversee the comedy series with co-creator Chuck Lorre, but will be primarily running the Young Sheldon writers room.

The original five members of Big Bang — Jim Parsons, Johnny Galecki, Kaley Cuoco, Kunal Nayyar and Simon Helberg — will all return for the season, taking sizeable pay cuts so 'newcomers' Mayim Bialik and Melissa Rauch can receive more money.

Bialik and Rauch both became regular cast members during the show’s fourth season but have ‘only’ been making around $175,000-$200,000 per episode while the original five received around $1 million per episode.

Parsons — who plays the older Sheldon and will narrate the upcoming spin-off — and his colleagues, however, have taken a $100,000 cut to bring Bialik and Rauch’s pay more in-line with their own. Now, the original five will earn $900,000 per episode for the next two seasons.

Those extraordinary numbers are only feasible because of The Big Band Theory’s popularity: season nine was watched by 19.36 million viewers, scoring highly in the 18-49 age range, the most important demographic for advertisers.

Meanwhile, a trailer for Young Sheldon debuted earlier this year, the project being likened to Malcolm in the Middle. Iron Man and The Jungle Book director Jon Favreau helms the first episode, debuting on 2 November.

The Big Bang Theory returns 25 September.

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