South Park Locks Into Paramount Plus With $1.5B Streaming Deal
Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of the long-running animated show South Park, have locked in a five-year deal to bring their show to the Paramount Plus streaming service and to give Paramount global streaming rights.
As reported in the Los Angeles Times, the duo will keep making 10 episodes per year and replaces a deal that the franchise had with HBO Max and its parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery. The South Park team was locked in negotiations for months for what would have been a $3 billion, 10-year deal, according to previous reports.
The deal covers only streaming rights and doesn't include merchandising or what the pair's production company Park County gets in a separate deal with Comedy Central to keep the show running on that network.
The show's 27th season was delayed to July 23 because of the behind-the-scenes maneuvering involving an ongoing acquisition of Paramount by Skydance Media. The TV series began on Comedy Central in 1997.
Parker and Stone will take the stage at San Diego Comic-Con the day after the show's premiere on July 24 for a panel with Saturday Night Live alum Andy Samberg and Beavis and Butt-Head creator Mike Judge.
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After ‘Eddington:' 7 Offbeat Westerns to Watch Next
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The movie, which people forget was nominated for four Academy Awards (including Best Picture), follows Chris Pine and Ben Foster, who are robbing banks to save their family ranch. Jeff Bridges is the Texas Ranger on their tail. They both tackle current-day social issues (the pandemic vs. the country's abysmal economic condition) but do it in an incredibly entertaining way, with Scottish director David Mackenzie upping the tension and Nick Cave and Warren Ellis delivering a beautiful, elegiac score (they also scored 'The Proposition,' see above). While 'Hell or High Water' might be more outwardly entertaining, it is still very much of a piece with 'Eddington.' Again: with fewer jokes and conspiracies. The post After 'Eddington:' 7 Offbeat Westerns to Watch Next appeared first on TheWrap.
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In "National Brotherhood Week," which lampooned the brief interlude of imposed tolerance celebrated annually from the 1930s through the early 2000s he wrote: Oh, the white folks hate the black folksand the black folks hate the white folks,to hate all but the right folks is an old established rule …But during National Brotherhood Week (National Brotherhood Week),Lena Horne and Sheriff Clark are dancing cheek to fun to eulogizeThe people you despise,As long as you don't let 'em into your school. Lehrer's songs also took aim at then-taboo subjects such as sexuality, pornography and addiction. In 1953, his self-released album 'Songs of Tom Lehrer" became an underground hit. Produced for $40 and promoted by word of mouth, the cover image was of Lehrer in hell playing piano as the devil. It eventually sold an estimated 500,000 copies and sparked demand for concert performances around the world. During the mid-1960s, Lehrer contributed several songs to the satirical NBC news show 'That Was the Week That Was,' hosted by David Frost. The show inspired Lehrer's third album, 'That Was the Year That Was.' Released in 1965, it reached the 18th spot on American music charts. On the occasion of his 90th birthday in 2018, Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik wrote that Lehrer's lyrics were written "with the facility of William S. Gilbert and tunes that evoked the felicity of Sir Arthur Sullivan. Lehrer's work bounced the absurdities and paranoias of that period back at us, in rhymed couplets and a bouncy piano beat." Thomas Andrew Lehrer was born in New York City on April 9, 1928, to a middle-class family. His father James Lehrer was a successful necktie manufacturer. As a child he took piano lessons but preferred Broadway show tunes — with a particular affection for the works of Gilbert and Sullivan — to the classics. After entering Harvard University at age 15, his penchant for sardonic humor surfaced in his parody song "Fight Fiercely Harvard," which challenged the football team's reputation for toughness and earned him a measure of renown on campus. For a time he followed a dual track, music and academia, though he never completed the PhD thesis he began while pursuing doctoral studies at Harvard and Columbia University. After a two-year break between 1955 and 1957 when he served in the Army, Lehrer once again performed concerts across the U.S., Canada and Europe. In a 1959 Time article, the magazine described Lehrer and fellow comedians Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl as the symbols of a new 'sick' comedy. 'What the sickniks dispense is partly social criticism liberally laced with cyanide, partly a Charles Addams kind of jolly ghoulishness, and partly a personal and highly disturbing hostility toward all the world." Lehrer's work opened the door for generations of musical satirists including Randy Newman and 'Weird Al' Yankovic and exerted an influence on everything from the musical skits of "Saturday Night Live" to the mockumentary "This Is Spinal Tap." "He set the bar for me — and provided an example of how a nerdy kid with a weird sense of humor could find his way in the world,' Yankovic once said of Lehrer. 'Done right, social criticism set to a catchy tune always makes politics easier to digest,' Lizz Winstead, co-creator of "The Daily Show," told Buzzfeed in an article examining Lehrer's influence on modern satirical comedy. But Lehrer was first and foremost an academic, over the course of his career teaching math and musical theater at Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and UC Santa Cruz and working for a time at the Atomic Energy Commission. He viewed entertainment largely as a sideline, and by the late 1960s had grown weary of life in the public eye. After several pauses to focus on his academic pursuits, he stepped off the stage in 1967 following a concert in Copenhagen. In 1971, he wrote songs for the PBS children's series "The Electric Company." His last turn in the spotlight was a year later. After performing at a presidential campaign rally for the Democratic nominee, South Dakota Sen. George S. McGovern, he gave up performing for good. Lehrer explained his retreat from the stage by saying that 'political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize." In an interview with the New York Times, he elaborated: 'The Vietnam War is what changed it. Everybody got earnest. My purpose was to make people laugh and not applaud. If the audience applauds, they're just showing they agree with me.' But audiences were not through with Lehrer. After nearly a decade in self-imposed exile, Lehrer became a hit once again in the early 1980s when Cameron Mackintosh, the British theatrical producer, created "Tomfoolery," a revue of Lehrer's songs that opened in London's West End before going to to play New York, Washington, Dublin and other cities. Despite the public acclaim, Lehrer maintained a fiercely private life. He never married nor did he have children. In 2020, Lehrer announced through his website that he was making all of the lyrics he wrote available to download for free without further permission, whether or not they were published or retained a copyright. Two years later he went further in relinquishing his rights, saying: 'In short, I no longer retain any rights to any of my songs. So help yourselves, and don't send me any money.' Get notified when the biggest stories in Hollywood, culture and entertainment go live. Sign up for L.A. Times entertainment alerts. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times. 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