SOUTH PARK Creators Trey Parker & Matt Stone Branch Out into the Streaming Universe

Trey Parker and Matt Stone Branch Out with $900 Million Deal

Trey Parker and Matt Stone partner with MTV Entertainment Studios and ViacomCBS, Inc., and plan 14 direct-to-streaming South Park spin-off films.

In days’ past, cartoons were relegated to Saturday mornings or shorts jammed in between lights-down and the feature in theaters. Artistically, animated film has come fully into its own. There are interesting parallels, both in technical approach and film content with respect to South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

The gifted pair’s signature cutout animation technique can be found more than a century ago in the first known full-length animated film, El Apóstol (1917), by Argentinian director Quiniro Cristani, a talented artist who more or less stumbled into filmmaking. The original (and only) 70-minute print was popular on its release but lost in a fire and had had no screening outside of Buenos Ares, yet remained seminal; Walt Disney collaborated with Cristani while on tour. (Incidentally, Mickey Mouse reigned supreme in Argentinian movie houses, edging out native filmmakers.)

On the other hand, Parker and Stone already had a loyal global audience when they launched their successful and controversial film, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999), directed and co-by Parker, along with Stone and Pam Brady, and based in part on episodes from the long-running cable series. One thing is certain: South Park has made the ‘cutout’ its very own.

Despite the controversy surrounding the South Park franchise, however, with as much pushback as acclaim, interest has never has never flagged from fans and professionals alike, and its popularity has never really suffered from any bad press. On the contrary, its franchise value now is higher than ever. The $9-million-plus-deal for the gifted pair which includes, by way of the pandemic, 14 direct-to-streaming spinoff films, scheduled to take off at the end of 2021 on the Paramount+ platform.

There is a second irony here, albeit a small one, that lies in the message rather than the technique. It’s more apropos because filmmaking showed its very first glimmer of commercial application, hidden persuasion behind the magical illusion:

Exactly one century before South Park, Bigger, Longer & Uncut was released, British entrepreneur Arthur Melbourne-Cooper, at the behest of Bryant and May’s Match Company, produced and directed the first stop-action short, entitled Matches: An Appeal (1899). In these clever seconds of celluloid, matchsticks scurry about on their own, scratching out letters on a chalkboard the “appeal,” pleading with the audience to buy boxes of matches for soldiers fighting in South Africa, to light their smokes, each box at about a penny a pop.

So as the acorn gives rise to the mighty oak, a penny can grow into the deal of a century.

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