Trey Parker and Matt Stone extend their Emmy Award-winning series through Season 26; new season set to debut September 25 on Comedy Central.
‘South Park’ season 22 episode, ‘The Scoots.’ Season 23 debuts September 25 on Comedy Central. Image courtesy of Comedy Central.
South Park fans can rejoice today as series creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have a new deal with Comedy Central, extending their Emmy and Peabody Award-winning series for three more seasons. Currently the longest-running primetime scripted series on cable, the show is now set to run at least through a 26th season; 30 new episodes are planned, bringing the hit series’ total to 327. Comedy Central has also announced that the show’s 23rd season will premiere on September 25, and includes the milestone 300th episode.
Ahead of the Season 23 launch, viewers can take the SPandMe test to find out which South Park characters are inside you.
“South Park is the greatest comedy in the history of television, unmatched in its satirical strength and cultural relevancy and it shows no signs of slowing down,” said Kent Alterman, president of Comedy Central, Paramount Network and TV Land. “If humanity is still intact in 1,000 years, historians will see the most transcendent artists of our era as The Beatles, Muhammed Ali, and Matt and Trey. We’ll do as many seasons as they would like.”
“Apparently, our efforts to get our own show cancelled have fallen short,” said Parker and Stone. “Luckily, we love Comedy Central and Kent and our staff so we are looking forward to new cancellation opportunities in the next few years.”
Named “One of the All-Time Greatest TV Shows” by Entertainment Weekly and one of the “All-TIME 100 TV Shows” by TIME, South Park has been the highest-rated cable comedy in Primetime for six consecutive years with an Adult 18-49 rating +21% higher than the next best cable comedy in 2018. Over its historic 22-season run, fans of the series have consumed over 18.3 billion episodes on Comedy Central, which is the equivalent of over seven billion hours. South Park has proven incredibly popular on social media as well, with over 48 million fans across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube, making it the most-popular cable comedy series on each platform; the show generated 111 million streams in 2018.
Parker and Stone, co-creators of the series, will continue to write, direct and edit every episode of South Park, as they have since the series’ premiere in 1997. Parker, Stone, Anne Garefino and Frank C. Agnone II are the executive producers; Eric Stough, Adrien Beard, Bruce Howell and Vernon Chatman are producers. Chris Brion is the creative director of South Park Digital Studios, which you can find at southparkstudios.com.
Source: Comedy Central
Dan Sarto is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network.
