‘South Park’ Is Skipping the Election ‘On Purpose,’ but Also So That Paramount Can ‘Figure All Their S**t Out’

Harrison Richlin
·3 min read

For almost 30 years, “South Park” creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker have skewered everything, from pop culture to politics, with their trademark obscene sense of humor, but after multiple seasons of covering the Trump presidency, as well as its fallout, it seems they’re finally ready for a break from the current climate.

While promoting their upcoming documentary, “¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!,” Stone and Parker spoke with Vanity Fair for a recent interview, in which they explained their reasoning for skipping election commentary in their upcoming season and why they’ve delayed production.

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“We’ve tried to do ‘South Park’ through four or five presidential elections, and it is such a hard thing,” Stone said. “It’s such a mind scramble, and it seems like it takes outsized importance.”

Adding to these sentiments, Parker said, “Obviously, it’s fucking important, but it kind of takes over everything and we just have less fun. I don’t know what more we could possibly say about Trump.”

For this reason, “South Park” will not return for a new season until 2025, after the election is over and hopefully at a point where their parent company, Paramount, is in better standing. Being blunt, Parker said he and Stone were “waiting for Paramount to figure all their shit out” and that skipping coverage of this year’s race was “on purpose.”

These comments came around the same time Sony Pictures CEO Tony Vinciquerra also warned that the industry would be in “chaos” over the next two years, predicting a wave of “mergers and bankruptcies and sales and all kinds of fun things” that will make the current Paramount-Skydance deal look like a cakewalk.

“The business […] will be in a period of chaos for the next 18 to 24 months,” Vinciquerra said. “Just look at all the companies with cable networks that have this albatross of cable networks around their necks that they have to figure out what to do with.”

Though the Paramount-Skydance merger is now officially underway following a hectic “go-shop” window that featured a failed last-minute bid from Fubo chairman Edgar Bronfman Jr., the deal is not expected to be wrapped until Q3 2025, so while Stone and Parker may promise the return of “South Park” next year, if they’re waiting for Paramount to land on its feet, they may be waiting a while.

As for further reasoning behind not covering the 2024 election cycle, Stone said, “It’s just way more fun to be like, ‘Oh, Cartman’s going to dress up like a robot,'” but also, there are more topical subjects to be joked about than just politics. For instance, earlier this year, they released a special tackling the latest weight-loss trend of using Ozempic to shed pounds, a drug Parker had used himself, but found life altering in ways he didn’t expect.

“I got on it. I lost, like, 25 pounds, but I was, like, I hate this — I feel different,” Parker said to Vanity Fair. “I feel like something’s different. Like, yes, I want to eat less, but I also want to do everything else less. And that’s where that whole show came from.”

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