Kendrick Lamar’s $100 Million Slavery Comedy Gets Shelved By Paramount
Originally published by AllHipHop Read the original
Kendrick Lamar and Paramount are stuck in a $100 million standoff over a slavery comedy that nobody’s seen and nobody knows when they’ll actually see.
The untitled film, known internally as “Whitney Springs,” was supposed to drop July 4, 2025, then got pushed to March 20, 2026, and then got yanked from the schedule entirely last November without any explanation.
Now it’s just sitting there, collecting dust while Trey Parker and Matt Stone are stuck apologizing for the delays.
The project started strong. Back in January 2022, Paramount picked up the script written by South Park veteran Vernon Chatman, and by CinemaCon 2024, then-Paramount Pictures head Brian Robbins was calling it “one of the funniest and most original scripts we’ve ever read.”
The comedy centers on a young Black re-enactor working at a historical slave plantation museum in the Midwest who clashes with the town’s hypocritical racist mayor, played by Parker himself.
The film also features original, unreleased music from Kendrick Lamar, who’s producing alongside Dave Free, with Parker directing and Stone producing.
But somewhere between the script reading and now, everything fell apart. Sources describe early cuts as “really rough,” and the budget ballooned to somewhere between $70 million and $150 million depending on who you ask.
According to The Ankler, Paramount committed more than $100 million through a negative pickup deal, meaning the creators keep whatever’s left from the budget.
Parker and Stone released a statement taking responsibility.
“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 timing is brutal for Paramount, which is currently fighting 12 state attorneys general over David Ellison’s $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, a deal Ellison spent the past year cozying up to Donald Trump to help push through federal antitrust review.