A new episode of Comedy Central’s animated sitcom “South Park” will be delayed by an extra week after the show’s co-creators said they missed a key production deadline.
In a note to fans published on various social media pages, South Park co-creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone said they simply ran out of time to finish the latest episode of the show’s 27th season, which started airing in July.
“Apparently, when you do everything at the last minute, sometimes you don’t get it done,” Parker and Stone said, adding “this one’s on us.”
“We didn’t get it done in time,” they admitted.
The episode is the fifth from the current season. The plot of the episode isn’t clear, though South Park has increasingly leaned into topical humor over the past few years.
Last week, Comedy Central pulled a scheduled rebroadcast of a recent episode that depicts protagonist (and often antagonist) Eric Cartman take on the persona of a podcast resembling conservative activist and radio show host Charlie Kirk. The episode, “Got a Nut,” was dropped after Kirk was fatally shot during a public appearance at a college in Utah. The episode remains available on cable and satellite on-demand platforms and on the streaming service Paramount Plus.
Historically, South Park’s producers have worked on a tight deadline for each episode of the show. A Comedy Central-produced documentary called “Six Days to Air” revealed the show is sometimes submitted to the network within hours of its scheduled broadcast.
Paramount recently signed a five-year, $1.5 billion deal to acquire the digital distribution rights to current and past episodes of South Park, with the agreement running through 2030. The deal involves the creation of no fewer than 50 episodes for Paramount Plus; Paramount’s deal to distribute the show on Comedy Central is covered under a separate arrangement that expires in 2027.
The next new episode of South Park is expected to air on Comedy Central next Wednesday, September 24. The show will take a two-week hiatus to get back on track, after which Comedy Central will start airing new episodes from October 15 onward.
