South Park’s Trey Parker and Matt Stone to Start Their Own Studio; Will Likely Produce a Book of Mormon Movie

South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone are set to start their own production studio, The New York Times reports.

It seems that investors, much like the South Park Gnomes, have been convinced that Parker+Stone+total creative control=$$$$$$$$$. Given Parker and Stone’s track record, both the investors and the Gnomes are likely correct.

The combined earning power of South Park, now in its 16th Season on Comedy Central, and the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical The Book of Mormon, has given the company “an estimated value of $300 million built on revenue.” Mormon continues to yield significant profits with the New York production earning $1.6 million a week, the tour an additional $1.6 million a week and the Chicago production $1.5 million a week. The play is also set to open in London.

Though the company, Important Studios, will be tackling projects in theater, film and television, a likely first project will be the long awaited, and oft discussed, big screen adaptation of the aforementioned Book of Mormon.

The pair has been talking about creating the studio for two years, and were initially inspired by Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks and George Lucas’s Lucasfilm, but have pared back their ambitions, a bit. “In some ways it’s a stupid comparison because they are gargantuan,” Stone said. “We want to be a smaller, more humble version of that.”  Adding, “If DreamWorks is Walmart, we are over here knitting sweaters.”

“At first we thought we’d get some money from a hedge fund or a Russian oligarch or something,” Stone said. They have instead teamed with a boutique merchant bank that focuses on entertainment, digital media and sports, The Raine Group.

Parker and Stone released the following, appropriate, statement:

“Having worked with several different studios over the years, we came to realize that our favorite people in the world are ourselves.”

We will keep you updated as details emerge.

Roth Cornet is an Entertainment Editor for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at@RothCornet and IGN at Roth-IGN.

Source : ign[dot]com