South Park got under Trump's skin
And how Ozzy changed television
Paramount tried to censor this week’s insane South Park episode
They guys said no, pissed off Trump, and now they’re poking the bear. It’s been a really wild week for South Park. First, the guys signed a new $1.5 billion dollar deal with Paramount. So obviously there corporate overlords love them and see a lot of value in the show.
But then on Wednesday, they returned with a new episode and they set their sights squarely on Paramount, President Trump and his member. The episode made jokes about Paramount cancelling Stephen Colbert, but more importantly, it included a live-action photorealistic deepfake on Trump without clothes.
Paramount initially did not want them to show his you know what. They wanted them to blur it, but Matt and Trey said no. They instead put eyes on it which made it a character. As Matt Stone explained on stage at Comic Con Thursday, “If we put eyes on [it], we won’t blur it. That was a whole conversation with grown-up people for four fucking days.”
The episode immediately went viral and clearly got under Trump’s skin, because the White House released a statement in response: “This show hasn’t been relevant for over 20 years and is hanging on by a thread with uninspired ideas in a desperate attempt for attention … no fourth-rate show can derail President Trump’s hot streak.”
In response to that, Stone offered a very sarcastic “We’re terribly sorry.” All of this by the way has been going on as Paramount sought approval from the Trump-controlled FCC for its Skydance merger. That $8 deal was finally approved on Thursday. Last night the South Park guys said they have no idea what next week’s episode will be about, but I can’t wait to see it.
Ozzy Osbourne changed the face of television
Ozzy Osbourne passed away Tuesday at the age of 76, and rightfully, every obituary led with his contributions to heavy metal and music. But in the early 2000s, as his fame and success was starting to fade, Ozzy and his family struck an unprecedented deal with MTV. They agreed to become the stars of a celebrity-fronted reality TV show.
That genre didn’t exist at the time, so MTV pitched it as a mix between Cribs and The Real World. Executive producer Jeff Stilson said “we considered it to be a documentary sitcom.” Jack Obsourne told The Ringer, “We didn't know what we were signing up for.” And Kelly Osbourne explained to Dax Shepard, “no one had ever done what we did before. We didn’t know what they were going to use … they filmed everything.”
The result was The Osbournes, which ran for 4 seasons from 2002 to 2005. The show topped cable ratings, received the highest viewership in MTV history, and it won the Emmy for Outstanding Reality Program in 2002.
But most importantly it opened the flood gates of celebrity reality shows, firectly leading to The Simple Life with Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie in 2003 and of course, Keeping Up With the Kardashians in 2007. Everything that came after from Duck Dynasty to Vanderpump to Below Deck, started with Ozzy.
Kevin Feige just came clean about Marvel’s recent mistakes
And he has proof that “superhero fatigue” has got nothing to do with it. Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige spoke to the press last Sunday, and revealed quite a lot about the state of the MCU.
For example, he explained that Secret Wars will serve as a reset for the franchise after which they will introduce new X-Men and eventually new actors playing Tony Stark and Steve Rogers. But he also copped to the big mistake Marvel made in the last 5 years.
“For the first time ever, quantity trumped quality. We spent 12 years working on the Infinity Saga saying that’s never going to happen to us.” But he admitted “We produced 50 hours of stories between 2007 and 2019.” But in the six years since Avengers: Endgame “we’ve had well over 100 hours of stories — in half the time. That’s too much.”
It’s refreshing to hear Feige admit it was too much. And he’s aware that Marvel’s “expansion” left fans overwhelmed, saying “That expansion I think led people to say, ‘It used to be fun, but now do I have to know everything about all of these?’” He also admitted that Thunderbolts underperformed at the box office, because “Nobody knew that title and many of those characters were from a [TV] show”
But Feige doesn’t believe superhero fatigue is real. He said “Look at ‘Superman.” Which just crossed $400M at the box office in 2 weeks “It’s clearly not superhero fatigue, right?” Basically, Feige believes demand for superheroes hasn’t gone down but Marvel instead flooded the market with too much supply.
As a result, he’s working on streamlining everything. There will be way fewer TV shows — maybe just 1 live-action show a year and those shows will have less overlap with the movies. He said “I think allowing a TV show to be a TV show is what we’re returning to.”
Feige also hyped Fantastic Four saying ““It is a no-homework-required movie. It literally is not connected to anything we’ve made before.” I think Feige is on the right track here. Do you think Marvel can pull out of its recent troubles?
Drake Bell just revealed a really sad fact about every former Nickelodeon star
And it’s something I wish more people understood about Hollywood. If you’re in the top 1% of actors, Hollywood can be very a lucrative place. The biggest stars make dozens if not hundreds of millions of dollars. But that is the exception not the rule for most actors.
As former Nick star Drake Bell just explained to the Unplanned Podcast, “That’s the perception of the world: It’s like, ‘I saw you on TV. You’re rich.' ” But he says “That’s far from the case. And especially, for most of us on Nickelodeon, we don’t get residuals for our shows.”
Bell explained that residuals are very important for actors, when work isn’t consistent. Bell says Nick stars didn’t get residuals because the network was run by “a lot of evil, corrupt people.” The actor is frustrated that Drake and Josh continues to air, but he doesn’t get a cut.
“This corporation is making billions with a ‘B’ off of us … There are three channels doing ‘Drake & Josh’ marathons. Netflix just bought it, it’s top 10 on Netflix, and I gotta figure out how to pay my rent this month. And some fat cat with a cigar is just sitting up at the top of Viacom … just like getting high on child labor.”
A real world tragedy significantly changed Happy Gilmore 2
After nearly 30 years Happy Gilmore is back. The long awaited sequel hit Netflix friday and it’s classic Adam Sandler. As Sandler typically does, he got the whole gang back together. The movie includes returning stars Christopher McDonald, Julie Bowen, and Ben Stiller.
But as Sandler just told Collider, they had to make a “painful change” to the script, because original Chubbs actor Carl Weathers passed away in February of 2024. Sandler explained that “Carl Weathers had a massive part I would talk to Carl, and we were excited, and then Carl passed away. We had to rewrite a lot of the stuff, and even what the story was. We made a lot of nice references to how great Chubbs was in the movie. That was the biggest change.”
Now of course, the character Chubbs died in the original film, so Sandler explained that the character came back in dream sequences. “In the first version that we came up with, [Chubbs] had a son. He was coming back to me a lot in my dreams and he had a son who was mad at Happy for causing the death of daddy.”
The sequel’s director Kyle Newacheck said they didn’t forget Weathers, “You can be assured his spirit is throughout the film. He may not be by Happy’s side anymore, but he’s on his shoulder.”