During the earlier days of the ongoing pandemic, South Park creators Matt Stone & Trey Parker earned a bit of viral attention for a deepfake video entitled ‘Sassy Justice’ starring Donald Trump (sorta).
Voiced by Peter Serafinowicz, the puppeted likeness of the former US President reported news out of Cheyenne, Wyoming throughout the 14-minute short. Which was certainly quite the debut for Stone & Parker’s deepfake production studio Deep Voodoo.
At the time, Matt Stone explained: “Before the big scary thing of coronavirus showed up, everyone was so afraid of deepfakes [and] we just wanted to make fun of it because it makes it less scary.”
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“It really is this new form of animation for people like us, who like to construct things on a shot-by-shot level and have control over every single actor and voice. It’s a perfect medium for us,” said Trey Parker
As it turns out, this was just a teaser for much larger things to come. In a new interview with the Los Angeles Times, the billion-dollar duo confirmed there was once a feature-length Donald Trump deepfake movie in the works.
“Not a lot of people know that we were a day away from starting production on the first feature movie we had done since Team America: World Police,” said Parker.
“We were going to start shooting on the day that the pandemic shut everything down. It was months and months of getting ready for that movie to just being like, ‘Nope… it’s over.’ I went to the office to start packing up my things because I was just kind of in shock.”
So what’s the current status of Matt Stone & Trey Parker’s Donald Trump deepfake movie as of 2022?
“It’s sort of on hold,” revealed Stone.
“It was very timely and the timeliness of it has passed. We’d have to majorly rethink it to do it now,” added Parker.
Granted, it’s slightly disappointing to hear we missed out on another 90 minutes of spicy takes from the fellas, but keep in mind South Park has already (indirectly) covered the rise of Donald Trump via former elementary school teacher turned democratically elected Commander-in-Chief: Mr Garrison.
Furthermore, considering the blockbuster deal they inked with ViacomCBS this time last year, there won’t exactly be any shortage of content from Matt Stone & Trey Parker, either. The parent company behind Paramount ordered six more seasons of South Park and 14 movies set within the same universe. And already, the kings of animated satire have been churning ’em out.
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On top of all this, Stone & Parker are on track to collaborate with Grammy Award-winning hip-hop legend Kendrick Lamar for a live-action comedy film based on a premise that’s uniquely… them.
The currently untitled project depicts “the past and present coming to a head” when a young black man who’s interning as a slave reenactor at a living history museum discovers his white girlfriend’s ancestors once owned his. Safe to say, you probably won’t see this movie being made by any other trio in the 21st century.
Matt Stone, Trey Parker, and K-Dot will be joined by Lamar’s longtime TDE partner Dave Free with Vernon Chatman signed on to pen the screenplay. Chatman has written and produced South Park alongside Stone and Parker for over 20 years now, in addition to voicing such beloved characters as Towelie, and lending his talents to other shows like FX’s Louie as well as Horace & Pete.
