South Park creators boldly blame the Paramount merger as a reason for delay in new episodes

The South Park Season 27 premiere has been delayed by two weeks, according to a press release from Comedy Central and Paramount. Soon after the announcement, the show's creators boldly blamed the Paramount merger for the delay in new episodes.

The Season 27 release delay comes more than two years after the premiere of Season 26, along with a lot of tension around the streaming rights over the show, considering that HBO Max's exclusive streaming rights expired in late June, and it has not been replaced yet. Here's everything we know.

South Park creators take to X to blame the episode delay on the Paramount merger

After the announcement of the delay in the Season 27 release from July 9 to July 23, the creators took to the official X (formerly Twitter) handle to express their opinions about the delay.

According to the statement, the creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, have said that the delay is happening because of the merger. They added that they are at the studio working on new episodes at the moment, and they sincerely hope that the fans can watch the Season 27 episodes somehow. Here's what the statement read:

"In response to the press release from Comedy Central about the change in premiere date for South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone said - "This merger is a sh*t show and it's fu*king up South Park. We are at the studio working on new episodes and we hope that the fans get to see them somehow" "

The merger in question here is the Comedy Central parent Paramount Global and Skydance Media merger, which has been pending FCC approval for almost a year and has a fast-approaching deadline of July 7. Along with tensions around the merger, HBO Max just expired their exclusive streaming rights for South Park, allowing it to be shopped.

According to reports, Jeff Shell, who will be the Paramount president in case the deal goes through successfully, has been accused by the creators of interfering in the streaming rights deals with other networks. This has led to a legal notice being served by the creators threatening legal action for any interference.

A legal battle seems to be brewing around the show's streaming rights, along with complications in the road to the merger, causing delays and frustrations in the episode premiere.

Hopefully, if the delay is limited to July 23, fans will soon get to witness Kyle, Stan, Kenny, and Cartman back on their screens on July 23, 10 PM ET/PT.

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Edited by Debanjana