New South Park and Friday the 13th films are in the early stages of development... and bizarrely, it's all thanks to Christopher Nolan! It appears that earlier this year when Nolan convinced Paramount Pictures (where Jonathan Nolan's Interstellar script was setup) to work with his trusted home at Warner Bros on his new sci-fi movie, a sweetener in the deal was for the latter studio to give up partial film rights to both these popular, but oddly unrelated properties for the next five years. That seems to be the price of admission WB had to pay to earn themselves half of what the Nolan's are cooking up. Lose Jason Voorhees and Cartman = gain 50% stake in a potential new Inception, and stay in the Chris Nolan family.
The Hollywood Reporter says Paramount now own WB's rights to make films out of these properties after years of false starts and complicated negotiations due to a lack of studio cooperation. Paramount's only got five years with both saga's, but they can make as many movies as they like in that time.
It's been 15 years since Trey Parker and Matt Stone released the infamous South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut that dominated the pop culture scene in the summer of 1999. It made $52 million domestically and $83 million worldwide, a healthy profit on a $21 million budget but a sequel was never made. The show has dipped in popularity since the late 90s but it's still going strong on the small screens as its now preparing to enter its 17th season later this year. Warner Bros, who did exit Comedy Central where South Park got its start, had retained partial film rights and international distribution to the saga... but now these have reverted to Paramount.
Friday the 13th franchise has much more recently featured on our screens. In 2009, Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes rebooted the 80s slasher franchise but it was poorly constructed, failing to grasp why the early films in the series did so well and was savaged by critics. It was originally planned to be a clean slate for a franchise that had been everywhere from Camp Crystal Lake to Manhattan, to Space and back, before squaring off against Nightmare On Elm Street's slasher Freddy Krueger in a deeply disappointing cross-over film in 2003. Paramount and WB had co-financed the movie 50/50 (Paramount had domestic rights, Warner Bros had the international) but now Paramount own it entirely. As for where a new film could go is anyone's guess but if Paramount were smart they would forget completely the idea of continuity and just start again with a new film where Jason is already a masked killer at Camp Crystal Lake but isn't bogged down by previous events. Interstellar meanwhile opens November 2014.