EXCLUSIVE: South Park fans and teeth-gnashing MAGA supporters are going to have to wait a little longer this season for new episodes of the biting satire from Matt Stone and Trey Parker.
After airing the third episode of its 27th season on August 20, a new South Park once again will be absent this week from Comedy Central and Paramount+, and that looks to be the new normal for the rest of the show’s 10-episode run this year.
So far, South Park‘s Donald Trump-pounding season is set to be back with another new episode on September 3, with the next new episode after that to follow on September 17. Announced by Paramount late last week, that schedule continues the week-on/week-off pattern the show has had since its delayed Season 27 premiered on July 23 with “Sermon on the Mount,” an episode written and directed by Parker that focused on Jesus, Trump and Satan.
Right now, though plans could shift, the current South Park production plan is to stick with such a schedule and have Season 27 run to around December 10, I hear.
“What they’re doing means this year’s episodes need more time than usual to put together, to finish,” a source close to the South Park producers tells Deadline, noting how up-to-the-minute the show has been on Trump’s attacks on democratic norms with ICE kidnappings, troops in the streets of L.A. and D.C. and a very dysfunctional affair with the Prince of Darkness (not Ozzy). “So much happens right now in just one day with Trump. No one’s going to sacrifice getting it right, even if we have to push getting it to air, and if that makes the season longer, so be it.”
All of which just fine with the folks at Paramount, A Skydance Corporation, I hear.
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“We’re not going to argue with what’s working, ” an insider at the David Ellison-run company said with a laugh about the unconventional broadcasting of this year’s new South Parks. “The numbers are great, the show is getting a lot of attention — if they want to give us a 20-week season for 10-episodes, that’s OK.”
As my colleague Katie Campione pointed out on August 13, “the second episode of Season 27 drew 6.2M global multi-platform viewers across Comedy Central and Paramount+ in its first three days. Mainly drawing from streaming (1.6 million viewers watch on Comedy Central according to L3 results), those numbers from Paramount for the ‘Got a Nut’ episode that saw VP JD Vance’s South Park debut were up from the 6 million who watched the Season 27 opener on multiple platform “Paramount says that global streaming consumption of the long-running series from Trey Parker and Matt Stone has grown double digits in the first three days of Episode 2702’s release, up 49% from the same period of streaming for the series post-premiere,” Campione noted.
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With all that music to everyone’s ears, reps for the WME-signed Parker and Stone did not respond to Deadline’s request for comment on the schedule for the rest of South Park’s 27th season. Neither did reps for Paramount brass.
Under the purview of Paramount Global ex-co-CEO George Cheeks, who is now CEO Ellison’s Chair of TV Media, the equal-offender animated series is produced by South Park Digital Studios, a joint venture co-owned by Paramount and series creators Parker and Stone’s Park County.
Back after a two-year break of sorts filled with studio-on-studio legal battles, some potential friendly fire-ish legal battles, a beyond 11th hour five-year deal for Stone and Parker and a $1.5 billion exclusive five-year license agreement with Paramount+, South Park now will roll out 50 new episodes during the next half-decade. As a key ingredient of Ellison and streaming chief Cindy Holland’s bid to supersize Paramount+ over the next few years, all of South Park‘s previous twenty-six seasons are now only on Paramount+ a.k.a. the home of the Taylor Sheridan Manoverse.
The post ‘South Park’ To Continue Skipping Weeks For Stretched-Out Season 27 — And Paramount Is A-OK With That appeared first on Deadline.
