The creative duo behind the animated success of South Park, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, have made several lucrative agreements in the past concerning their long-running, foul-mouthed TV comedy, but they just closed one deal to rule them all. Stone and Parker locked into a $900 million partnership with ViacomCBS for a ton of new content, and they plan to spend the new funds in some pretty awesome and specific ways, proving the show is nowhere close to being canceled, and neither are its creators.
Unlike some of their past agreements, this massive deal will result in a ton of new content that goes even beyond the animated hit that put Trey Parker and Matt Stone on the map. Fans can expect at least six more seasons of the Comedy Central series, as well as 14 South Park movies heading to Paramount+, with more on those below. In addition to what the deal itself lays out for South Park's future, the massive payout for the creators and their studio seems to ensure fans have even more controversial and crude humor to look forward to across multiple types of media.
In an interview with Bloomberg that took place following the megadeal's announcement, Matt Stone explained that the money earned from the deal won’t necessarily change their personal lives, as he and Trey Parker have already earned plenty of money from the decades-long success of their creation. Instead, they're looking forward to investing this new money flow into other projects for their media company. Here’s how Stone laid it out:
We’ve been rich for a long time. 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. We have a horror movie. A musical. I think we’re really for the first time going to bring Tegridy Weed into real life. We are gunning for this restaurant that’s just been abused in Colorado. It’s Trey’s dream to revamp Casa Bonita.
It sounds like a ton of money is being pushed toward a new South Park video game that will potentially be quite different from the RPG releases The Stick of Truth and The Fractured but Whole. As well, it sounds like they're going gung ho for their previously announced movie project using only Deep Fakes for the performances. Beyond that, the duo aim to work on a horror movie, and another musical project presumably not tied to Book of Mormon, although I guess it isn't fully clear whether the horror and musical are mutually exclusive.
Along with expanding the South Park franchise and taking on other fictional projects, Matt Stone and Trey Parker are fully aiming to do something about their beloved Casa Bonita that has been featured in the South Park universe a few times already. And in the same vein, they want to turn the animated series' Tegridy Farms marijuana into a real-world brand, which should make for some fun packaging ideas.
Back to the animated side of things now. Matt Stone and Trey Parker already made one Oscar-nominated South Park movie, and this deal will pay for a slew of new full-length features. In the same interview, Stone also discussed the creative difference between making the typical 22-minute episode versus making a movie, saying the pair definitely have ideas that are more fit for projects that go beyond what TV time slots allow. Here it is in the writer’s own words:
The show is 22 minutes. It’s a sitcom. It is ancient, in a way. But we still really love that. At the same time, you come up with an idea and realize it’s longer than 22 minutes. 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. 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.
A deal of this size is pretty epic, and this sounds like an ideal case where it's good for both the creators and for fans, as everyone can look forward to somewhere around $900 million worth of content coming in the future. Exciting and creative things are happening in the South Park universe, so hopefully the characters are ready for at least a few more years of shenanigans. While waiting to hear more, be sure to stay current with everything hitting the 2021 Fall TV schedule.
