“South Park” was the talk of Hollywood on August 5 after news broke that series creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker landed a $900-million deal with ViacomCBS to continue the animated show through 2027 (bringing the total number of seasons to 30) and create 14 original “South Park” movies exclusively for the company’s Paramount+ streaming platform.
Stone gave his first in-depth interview on the deal to Bloomberg’s Screentime newsletter, saying the mega-deal now gives the “South Park” duo “‘fuck you’ money.” Stone and Parker released the first “South Park” movie, “South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut,” in 1999. As for the 14 features to come, Stone said “streaming movies is pretty promising.”
“The show is 22 minutes. It’s a sitcom. It is ancient, in a way. But we still really love that,” Stone said. “There are ‘South Park’ episodes that are high concept enough where if you wanted to make a movie you could. We wanna scratch both itches. We feel like we can.”
Stone continued, “We have this idea where the first ones for Paramount+ are ‘South Park’ but not quite. We have a high concept idea for the first one to set it apart. But right after that we go back and do a six-episode run for Comedy Central and HBO Max, probably at the end of this year or early next year. The classic kind. But the movie first, either in one part or broken up in two. We think of it creatively as one big piece. Like a 90-minute movie.”
When asked if he fears “South Park” will fall victim to “cancel culture,” Stone responded, “No. As you can see from this deal, we have ‘fuck you’ money now. We’re more interested in it than whining about it. It’s a legit cultural change. We explore it all the time in the show.”
Stone also said the $900-million payday will not drastically change his business approach, which is to constantly cycle the money made from deals into new entertainment investments. Stone pointed to “South Park” money funding the Tony-winning Broadway blockbuster “The Book of Mormon.”
“We’ve been rich for a long time,” Stone said. “We have nice houses and cars. Even this giant deal won’t change my day-to-day. I’m not going to buy a new watch. We’re a media company. We use the proceeds from this to invest. These are multi-year projects we invested a bunch of money in. We have a ‘South Park’ 3D video game, release date unknown. We’re doing deep fakes. We have a studio with a dozen people who are deep fake artists. We’re working on a little more of this deep fake movie we’re trying to piece together.”
The next season of “South Park” will launch on Comedy Central in 2022. The first two new “South Park” films will debut this year.
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