Grammy and Pulitzer Prize-winning rapper Kendrick Lamar is teaming up with Emmy and Tony-winning South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone (they won their Tony for The Book of Mormon) for a new live-action project. Last week, Paramount Pictures announced they would team with Parker, Stone, and Lamar on an as-yet-untitled comedy that deals with racial issues through Parker and Stone’s cracked lens.
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Per the series’ official synopsis, the movie will “depict the past and present coming to a head when a young Black man who is interning as a slave re-enactor at a living history museum discovers that his white girlfriend’s ancestors once owned his.”
“On behalf of Paramount Pictures and the wider ViacomCBS family, we look forward to ushering in the first theatrical collaboration from these creative visionaries, and galvanizing audiences worldwide around a powerful storytelling experience,” Paramount president and CEO Brian Robbins said in a statement.
The movie comes from a screenplay by former The Chris Rock Show and Late Night With Conan O’Brien staffer Vernon Chatham, and production is slated to begin in the spring.
It is not yet known whether the film will get a theatrical release, or if the plan is to release it on Paramount+. Generally speaking, the best-performing new movies on Paramount+ have been family films like Paw Patrol: The Movie and Clifford the Big Red Dog.
Lamar was recently nominated for an Academy Award for “All the Stars,” the track he contributed to the Black Panther soundtrack.
Recently, Trey Parker and Matt Stone signed a deal with ViacomCBS’ MTV Entertainment Studios for a whopping $900 million. The deal will keep South Park running new episodes all the way to Season 30 (it’s currently on its 25th season), and included 14 South Park movies and six new seasons.
“Comedy Central has been our home for 25 years and we’re really happy that they’ve made a commitment to us for the next 75 years,” Parker and Stone said at the time. “When we came to ViacomCBS with a different way to produce the show during the pandemic, Chris (McCarthy), Nina (Diaz), Keyes (Hill-Edgar) and Tanya (Giles) were immediately supportive and enabled us to try something new that turned out to be really well received. We can’t wait to get back to doing traditional South Park episodes but now we can also try out new formats. It’s great to have partners who will always take a chance with us.”
