Clifford the Big Red Dog turned out as a smash hit for Paramount Plus, breaking onto the platform as the most-watched original feature on the streaming platform to date when it launched in mid-November. But despite the film’s immense popularity, Clifford just can’t keep up with one of Paramount’s best TV exclusives in recent memory.
South Park: Post COVID landed on Paramount Plus on Nov. 25, and the made-for-streaming pandemic special has dominated Paramount’s top 10 chart since. In fact, South Park dethroned Clifford from the first place slot worldwide on Nov. 25, pushing the family film off of its 15-day streak held on all the way to the Thanksgiving holidays.
As far as Paramount Plus offerings go, Clifford and South Park couldn’t be any different from each other. The former is an adaptation of the original Clifford the Big Red Dog children’s series by Normal Bridwell. The film tells a touching origin story around Clifford, a red dog who far outmatches his human counterparts in size and strength, and his school-aged owner Emily. While the film was jeered online for bringing a fantastical, cartoonish children’s book into a real-world setting, and critics have declared it “nowhere near as charming as its classic source material,” the film holds a 94 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes among viewers, hence its streaming popularity.
Of course, South Park is South Park, and the decades-long adult animated series is hard to compete with. Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s Paramount-exclusive post-COVID special introduced a series of incredible new and hilarious premises to the series late last month. Years have passed since March’s South ParQ Vaccination Special, and Stan, Kyle, Kenny, and Cartman now reside in a dystopian future where doorbells sing and the new COVID Delta Plus Rewards Program variant is loose. The episode follows a larger mystery around Kenny’s death (surprise, right?), although this time, Kenny passes after becoming a world-renowned scientist on the bleeding edge of technology’s future.
Also, Cartman is a rabbi now.
The special itself has faced critical and popular acclaim, and with over a dozen expected in total on Paramount Plus, expect South Park to continue dominating the network’s top 10 films list over the coming months ahead. Don’t weep for Clifford, though: The film closed out Nov. 30 at second place worldwide, making it still one of Paramount’s hottest offerings to date.
