‘South Park’ creators confirm deepfake film is “on hold”

South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have confirmed that their deep fake film about Donald Trump is currently “on hold”.

Speaking to the Los Angeles Times, the pair revealed that film – titled Deep Fake: The Movie – was a day away from starting production, only to be halted by the pandemic.

Parker and Stone had previously worked with Peter Serafinowicz on the viral web series Sassy Justice, which used deepfake technology to project the faces of celebrities and politicians onto fictional characters. Some of the notable figures included Trump, Mark Zuckerberg and Jared Kushner.

This web series, however, was just the beginning of Parker and Stone’s foray into deepfake technology.

“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.’”

Stone continued: “We were working on a deepfake movie [with Serafinowicz]. We have a deepfake company [called Deep Voodoo], and we have all these deepfake artists working for us. Even though the script was sort of timely, we ended up keeping the deepfake part of the studio going.”

Parker added: “It was going to be Deep Fake: The Movie. It was about this guy who looked exactly like Trump because we deepfake Trump’s face onto him. And it was this whole funny thing because, of course, it ends up with Trump just naked and getting run through the wringer and everything, and that’s why it was so funny and so timely.”

Stone confirmed that the film is now “sort of on hold,” while Parker admitted that the project will require a “major rethink” to restore its timeliness.

Elsewhere, South Park recently marked its 25th anniversary with an orchestral concert at the Red Rocks Amphitheater in Morrison, Colorado.

The two-night event will air on Comedy Central in US on August 13 at 10pm ET, and will be available to stream on Paramount+ the following day. A UK release date has not yet been confirmed.