Back in January 2022, South Park co-creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone announced that they’d signed on to produce an untitled live-action comedy for Paramount alongside Kendrick Lamar and his creative partner Dave Free. Emmy-winning South Park scribe Vernon Chatman wrote the script, but the report specifically said that there was no director attached to the project.
Sources now tell Above the Line that Parker will direct the film himself, though it remains unclear when production will start. The project was initially scheduled to start shooting last spring before Parker’s South Park commitments got in the way.
Chatman’s script finds the past and present coming to a head when a young Black man who is interning as a slave reenactor at a living history museum discovers that his white girlfriend’s ancestors once owned his.
Parker and Stone are producing under their Park County banner, while Free and Grammy-winning rapper Lamar will produce via their company pgLang, which launched in 2020 and serves as a record label, as well as a production and publishing house. The untitled Paramount feature will be the pgLang’s first.
Paramount Pictures CEO/President Brian Robbins called the producing team “creative visionaries” in a statement last year and boasted that the project would be “a powerful storytelling experience.” The studio will handle theatrical distribution, home entertainment, and television licensing rights, with the film also slated to stream on Paramount+.
In addition to South Park, which will return to Comedy Central for its 26th season, and the Oscar-nominated movie South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, Parker and Stone are the creators of Team America: World Police and BASEketball, as well as the co-creators of Tony-winning Broadway musical Book of Mormon along with Robert Lopez. Parker is represented by WME.
A representative for Paramount had no comment. The studio has Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves set for release on March 31, while Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One will hit theaters on July 14th.
Source: Above The Line
