South Park Releases Hilarious Teaser For New Specials Goofs On Recasting Characters To Pander To Audiences, And It's Already Making People Mad

South Park has unveiled a trailer for the show's latest special coming to Paramount+.

Already — in a mere 30 seconds — it has all the usual suspects blowing gaskets and clutching pearls.

The new special is called South Park: Joining the Panderverse, and while I think you probably have a sense of where this is headed, take a quick gander at the trailer itself, and then we'll reconvene.

Alright. It looks like Misters Trey Parker and Matt Stone are going to be taking on the absurd lengths some movies and TV shows are going to pander to fans through casting.

What better way to satirize this than "re-casting" a bunch of 9-year-old boys as adult women of color?

It's absurd, and yet it feels as though we're continuously getting close to something like this happening for real.

And that's why the show works.

In fact, the mere 30-second trailer sets up the premise so well, that certain outlets are already bumming.

AV Club Is Not Pumped About New South Park Special

The AV Club published a piece called "There's a new South Park 'event' teaser and god, we're already so tired." Yeah, it's wordy but gets the point across.

The brief piece announced the special's upcoming premiere. However, the writer also opined how people criticizing — or even just questioning this sort of thing — gives them headaches.

"The Spider-Man-referencing title suggests that the show will be offering its take on increasing calls for diversity in mainstream media (or at least allegations that said calls are cynically exploited by studios to make money), and, hey, do you get these pounding headaches in the front of your skull while watching this stuff?" the piece's author William Hughes asked in a run-on sentence for the ages. "We get these pounding headaches, in the front of our skull."

Well, it seems some folks are certainly concerned that South Park's brand of satire — which rarely if ever misses — might shine a lot on the ridiculousness of some of these over-the-top diversity casting decisions.

Pandering Casting Choices Are Almost Always Lazy Cash Grabs

It's also hard to argue that at least a few of these weren't done with the sole aim of getting money out of the brand of rube who falls for stuff like this.

From the Ghostbusters remake with *Jerry Lewis voice* Laaaaaaadieeeees, to pretty much every Disney-live action remake, and even an attempt at doing an all-female Oceans 11 reboot that no one either remembers or subconsciously blocked out like childhood trauma.

There's no bones about it: the practice is usually a lazy cash grab.

Why not create something new and cast women or people of color from the start?

Well, that would require effort and an ounce of creativity. Those can be tough to come by in Hollywood these days.

Here's another superhero movie; like it or get bent...

But who knows? Maybe they won't be too hard on the practice. Maybe they'll zig when everyone expects them to zag. I don't think that's the case, but you never know.

The new special — which will reportedly goof on AI as well — premieres Oct. 27.

It's entirely possible — even likely — that by early on Oct. 28, we'll get a lot more angry think pieces about it.

Follow on X: @Matt_Reigle