SOUTH PARK WILL NOT RETURN TILL 2025 AS CREATORS DON'T KNOW WHAT MORE TO SAY ABOUT TRUMP

PEOPLE

 

South Park Won't Return Until 2025, Skipping Election Season 'on Purpose' as Creators 'Don't Know What More' to 'Say About Trump'

Series creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone confirmed that season 27 of the long-running Comedy Central series won't return until next year

By Julia Moore  Published on September 5, 2024 03:53PM EDT

 

South Park is on hiatus for the next few months.

 

Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of the long-running Comedy Central series, are admittedly tired of tackling Donald Trump for yet another presidential election. So much so, that they've decided to delay season 27 of the show until 2025 "on purpose" as Trump, 78, sets to face off against Vice President Kamala Harris.

 

"We’ve tried to do South Park through four or five presidential elections, and it is such a hard thing to—it’s such a mind scramble, and it seems like it takes outsized importance,” Stone told Vanity Fair.

 

Stone said that the election is "obviously...f---ing important, but it kind of takes over everything and we just have less fun."

 

Plus, as Parker pointed out, the pair "don’t know what more we could possibly say about Trump.”

 

Stone and Parker — who started making the animated series in 1997 — previously crafted a long-running story arc centered on the 2016 presidential election, making Mr. Garrison (voiced by Parker) a Trump-like figure who goes up against Hillary Clinton and comes out victorious. Even donning the businessman's signature look, Mr. Garrison's turn as president lasted from season 20 through season 24.

 

Given the creators' confirmation that no new episodes will air for the remainder of this year, May's Paramount+ special, South Park: The End of Obesity, serves as the show's only release of 2024.

 

The special, which premiered on May 24, explored how "the advent of new weight loss drugs" had "a huge impact on everyone in South Park," as Cartman was "denied access to the life-changing medicine," spurring the kids to "jump into action."

 

Before the Ozempic-inspired special, the most recent episode of South Park aired on March 29, 2023 to conclude season 26.

 

The year before that, Parker and Stone chatted with PEOPLE about the series' landmark 25th season, and Stone said that the process of making the show has "become an even more spontaneous thing" as the years have gone by.

 

"It's a 'let's get in a room, figure it out, and do it right now' thing," he said of their writing strategy. "It's mainly just, 'We've got to get something to put on in two weeks. What are we doing?' We've proven to ourselves that the show does not get better with more time. We don't need more time."

 

Parker agreed, saying, "We take everything a show at a time and a week at a time. And that has always been best."

 

Still, though, Stone admitted: "It is not just fun and games doing South Park. It's brutal and stressful and terrifying at times, so once in a while, you get a show that is just fun. It's rare, but those are the ones that keep it going."

 

South Park can be streamed on Max.