‘South Park’ Creators Sign $900M Deal With ViacomCBS To Make 14 Movies, More Episodes
Twenty-two years after the release of South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, the first and only feature in the franchise, more South Park films have been announced. Fourteen more.
Franchise creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have struck a deal with MTV Entertainment Studios to produce 14 original movies for Paramount+, the recently rebranded streaming service. They will also create new episodes of the series for Comedy Central through its 30th season in 2027. MTV, Comedy Central, and Paramount+ are all owned by ViacomCBS.
The deal will earn Parker and Stone more than $900 million over the next six years, according to Bloomberg. This makes it one of the most lucrative pacts in tv history.
“We did a South Park movie in 1999, and we’ve never done another one because the show has been so satisfying,” Stone told Bloomberg. “Now we’re older, and the idea of what streaming movies can be is pretty promising.” The upcoming movies will introduce new concepts and characters to the South Park world. The first will debut before the end of the year.
The deal makes good ViacomCBS’s stated intention to build its animation slate around tried-and-tested IP, with South Park as the centerpiece. The arrival of new movies as part of this strategy was teased a year ago.
Ironically, the streaming rights to South Park currently lie with Warnermedia’s HBO Max, one of Paramount+’s main competitors. The streamer picked the show up for a whopping $500M-plus over five years in 2019. The new movies will thus help fill a gaping hole in Paramount+’s offering.
Rival entertainment companies like Warnermedia and Disney have also fallen back on familiar franchises to entice customers to new streaming platforms. But even in the context of the heated streaming marketplace, ViacomCBS is making a big commitment to South Park. And with reason: now 23 seasons in, the series remains the most popular on Comedy Central.
As of June, ViacomCBS had over 42 million subscribers across its streaming services, which include Paramount+, BET+, and Showtime.
