Trey Parker and Matt Stone have finally said sorry, on the record, for how long their Kendrick Lamar movie has been stuck in limbo.

In a statement given to The Ankler this week, the South Park creators took the blame directly. "We take full responsibility for the schedule delay of this movie," they said. "We apologize to our partners at pgLang and Paramount, and we appreciate their patience. South Park and life's circumstances have gotten in the way, but we still believe in the project."

The project in question is Whitney Springs, a working title that's stuck around long enough to feel permanent. It's a musical comedy at Paramount, produced under Parker and Stone's Park County banner alongside Kendrick Lamar and his pgLang partner Dave Free. Reps for Paramount and for Parker and Stone hadn't responded to requests for comment as of this reporting, according to Variety.

A plot that keeps shifting too

Even the story keeps changing shape depending on who's telling it. Early loglines described a Black man working as a slave reenactor at a living history museum who learns his white girlfriend's family once enslaved his ancestors. The Ankler's version tweaks that. Its report says the reenactor instead clashes with a racist small-town mayor in the Midwest, a role Parker himself is set to play. The Ankler also says Lamar has recorded several original, unreleased songs for the film, though nobody's confirmed a soundtrack or a release plan around them.

South Park producer Vernon Chatman wrote the script. Nobody involved has confirmed a cast beyond Parker's own role.

What isn't in dispute is how badly the calendar has behaved. The film was first dated for July 4, 2025, then bumped to March 20, 2026, reportedly because of Lamar's touring schedule and South Park's own production demands. By last November, according to The Hollywood Reporter, it had been pulled off the release calendar entirely and hasn't been rescheduled since. A joint statement from Park County and pgLang at the time simply said the teams were "working hard at finishing the movie."

There's history behind the studio's enthusiasm here. Back at CinemaCon in April 2024, then-Paramount film chief Brian Robbins called the script "one of the funniest and most original" the studio had read. Robbins has since exited amid the Paramount-Skydance merger, with David Ellison now running the show as chairman and CEO. Whether the new regime feels the same way about Whitney Springs is anyone's guess.

Parker and Stone aren't exactly short on things to do in the meantime. South Park just picked up its sixth Emmy for best animated series, and Season 29 premieres September 16, continuing its running war of words with Donald Trump, most recently by renaming the show South America. Whitney Springs, for now, stays on the shelf, undated, unstaffed on the cast side, and apparently still alive.