After signing a new $1.5 billion deal with Paramount, Trey Parker and Matt Stone are part of Hollywood’s most elite club.
If you piss off South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, they will make you pay—both financially and satirically. On July 2, after Comedy Central delayed the Season 27 premiere of the show because Paramount, the network’s parent company, was locked in a contentious negotiation for its streaming rights—in the midst of months-long acquisition of Paramount by David Ellison’s Skydance Media—Parker and Stone issued a statement on X.com and let it rip: “This merger is a shit show,” the duo wrote, “and it’s fucking up South Park.”
Both transactions were resolved this week, as Parker and Stone agreed Monday to a five-year, $1.5 billion streaming deal that will bring South Park to Paramount+ globally. And Thursday, the FCC officially approved the Skydance acquisition. The deal cements the duo’s place as the highest-paid TV showrunners in Hollywood and made the 55-year-old Parker and the 54-year-old Stone billionaires—worth an estimated $1.2 billion each.
But the new agreement—which will pay the pair at least $250 million per year—didn’t end Paramount’s headaches. In South Park’s season premiere, which aired Wednesday, Donald Trump is depicted in bed with Satan, and Jesus is seen warning the show’s young protagonists about the dangers of provoking him. “You guys saw what happened to CBS? Well, guess who owns CBS? Paramount,” says the Jesus character. “You really want to end up like Colbert?”
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