Adult animation phenomenon South Park has been running since 1997 and it’s currently in its 24th season yet, somehow, the hilarious franchise has only been spun off into one feature film — 1999’s South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut.
That is all about to change, however, with the news that Trey Parker and Matt Stone have signed a mega-deal with ViacomCBS’ MTV Entertainment Studios that will see the brilliant duo produce 14 South Park films for Paramount Plus.
The animated series itself has been renewed for an additional six seasons, through to 2027 which means we will be laughing out loud for a while yet.
Evidently, Parker and Stone are also laughing — all the way to the bank — as it has been reported that the huge deal is valued at USD $900 million over the six-year term. It has also been reported that Parker and Stone will be advanced USD $150 million a year to cover their fees for the upcoming productions as well as their ongoing profit participation stakes from the franchise.
This new deal not only means that we will get to keep up with the antics of Cartman, Kenny, Stan and Kyle for years to come but represents Stone and Parker’s Park County banner — which includes the hit Broadway show Book of Mormon —being valued at over USD $1 billion.
Chris McCarthy, president-CEO of MTV Entertainment and chief content officer of adult animation for Paramount Plus, said in a statement, “Matt and Trey are world-class creatives who brilliantly use their outrageous humour to skewer the absurdities of our culture and we are excited to expand and deepen our long relationship with them to help fuel Paramount+ and Comedy Central.”
Indeed, the creative geniuses put their sardonic spin on the pandemic in 2020 and again earlier in 2021, with a special episode titled The South ParQ Vaccination Special. The hilarious episode examined the rise of QAnon conspiracy and anti-vaxxers that have been popping up like a whack-a-mole game since the COVID-19 situation first arose.
The episode featured the South Park QAnon chapter anointing Mr Garrison as the movement’s “chosen one” and coming to the conclusion that he is spreading the good Q word straight to the kids in his class.
Later in the episode, Butters becomes a member of the “Little Qties” – the children’s version of QAnon, which is created as the organisation seeds tutors into South Park Elementary in order to convert the students to the belief system.
Addressing the news in a statement, Parker and Stone said, “Comedy Central has been our home for 25 years and we’re really happy that they’ve made a commitment to us for the next 75 years.
“When we came to ViacomCBS with a different way to produce the show during the pandemic, Chris (McCarthy), Nina (Diaz), Keyes (Hill-Edgar) and Tanya (Giles) were immediately supportive and enabled us to try something new that turned out to be really well received. We can’t wait to get back to doing traditional South Park episodes but now we can also try out new formats. It’s great to have partners who will always take a chance with us.”
Let the good times LOL.
Paramount Plus launches in Australia on August 11, 2021.
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