South Park: The Stick of Truth still on track for 2013 release, Ubisoft confirms - VideoGamer.com:

South Park: The Stick of Truth is still on track for release this calendar year, Ubisoft has told VideoGamer.com, despite the game being absent from the publisher’s latest official release schedule.

VideoGamer.com contacted Ubisoft earlier this week to enquire about the game’s status after noticing that the game was not included in the publisher’s latest release update sent to media on Monday.

However, a Ubisoft representative told VideoGamer.com that it had no further update on the status of the title and that the game was still “scheduled for release in calendar 2013”.

Trey Parker & Matt Stone Planning Scientology Musical? - BroadwayWorld.com:

According to an unnamed source over at ContactMusic.com, South Park and multi-Tony Award-winning THE BOOK OF MORMON creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone may very well have their next subject for musicalization decided upon: Scientology.

This doesn’t seem likely to be true, but if BroadwayWorld reported it, then it might as well be posted here too.

Today marks the second anniversary of the opening of The Book of Mormon on Broadway, so it’s as good as a time as any to do a roundup of references from the show.

Song References/Info

• ‘Hello!’ is reminiscent of Bye Bye Birdie’s ‘The Telephone Hour’.
• ‘Two by Two’ has a spoof of Annie’s ‘Tomorrow’.
• The “African” at the airport sings a song that is similar to the opening of The Lion King’s ‘The Circle of Life’.
• ‘You And Me (But Mostly Me)’ is similar to songs from Wicked, particularly ‘The Wizard and I’ and ‘Defying Gravity’. For example, ‘The Wizard and I’ ends with a character singing “YOUUUUU!” while ‘You And Me’ ends with a character singing “MEEEEEEE!”).
• ‘Hasa Diga Eebowai’ is a satire of The Lion King’s ‘Hakuna Matata’ and songs from Once on This Island. Elder Cunningham even asks, “Does it mean no worries for the rest of our days?”
• ‘Turn It Off’ is similar to The Pajama Game’s ‘I’ll Never Be Jealous Again’. It also further satirizes the “forget about your worries” philosophy of ‘Hakuna Matata’ by showing the negative consequences of suppressing problems and emotions.
• ‘All-American Prophet’ has the sing-talking from songs in The Music Man like ‘Ya Got Trouble’ and similarities to songs from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Additionally, Joseph Smith is described as having “a little Donny Osmond flair” and Donny Osmond played Joseph in the film version of the musical. Also, Donny Osmond is a Mormon.
• ‘Sal Tlay Ka Siti’ is a parody of “I Want” songs like The Little Mermaid’s ‘Part of Your World’ and Little Shop of Horrors’ ‘Somewhere That’s Green’ (both were composed by Alan Menken.)
• ‘Man Up’ has some similarities to Orgazmo’s ‘Now You’re A Man’.
• ‘Making Things Up Again’ has elements from Sunday in the Park With George’s ‘Putting It Together’. It also has Elder Cunningham singing the word “Imagination” in a tune that is similar to how the word is sung in South Park’s “Imaginationland”.
• ‘Spooky Mormon Hell Dream’ has a brief spoof of ‘Jesus Loves Me’.
• The Orlando scene has a musical score that is similar to Disney’s Fantasmic theme song.
• ‘I Believe’ parodies songs from The Sound of Music including ‘Climb Ev’ry Mountain’ and ‘I Have Confidence’. For example, ‘I Have Confidence’ has the lyrics, “A captain with seven children/What’s so fearsome about that?” while ‘I Believe’ has “A warlord who shoots people in the face/What’s so scary about that?”
• ‘Joseph Smith, American Moses’ parodies The King and I’s ‘Small House of Uncle Thomas’ including its music, staging, and costumes.

Other References/Info

• The opening scene is a parody of the Hill Cumorah Pageant.
• The “African” woman at the airport is a spoof of “Rafiki” from The Lion King.
• Nabulungi means “beautiful” in Luganda (the major language of Uganda). Throughout the play Elder Cunningham mistakenly calls her the wrong name and it varies in each performance. Examples: Neutrogena, Noxzema, Neosporin, Nakatomi Plaza, Nabagamba, Non-Equity, Nala, Netflix, Nathan Lane, Nagasaki, and Newt Gingrich.
• The Spooky Mormon Hell Dream has dancing Starbucks coffee cups and force-fed coffee torture because Mormons are prohibited from drinking coffee.
• Elder Cunningham mixes the Mormon theology with the mythology of Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of The Rings, and The Matrix.
• General Butt Fucking Naked is named after “General Butt Naked,” a former Liberian warlord who fought in the nude because he believed his nakedness would protect him from bullets and who later converted to Christianity and became a preacher. The character is modeled after Joseph Kony, the head of a large Ugandan guerrilla group, and in previews the character was named “General Koni”.
• Elder Price visiting The General’s camp to convert him is similar to the story of Abinadi in the Book of Mormon who visited King Noah’s court to announce the coming of Jesus. Elder Price even quotes Abinadi by saying “Touch me not!”
• Elder Cunningham tells Elder Price that in The Lord Of The Rings, Frodo’s sidekick, Samwise, was really the hero because Samwise did everything like getting the ring back from Gollum and carrying Frodo up the mountain. This foreshadows how Elder Cunningham would eventually be the one to unite the Ugandans and defeat the general.
• Elder Cunningham naming his made-up bishop, “Bishop Donahue,” is probably a reference to Phil Donahue.
• Trey and Matt provide the voices of the Narrator, Mormon the Nephite, and Jesus Christ in the opening scenes of Act I and II.

Did I miss any of your favorites? Comment/reblog/message me and I’ll update the post!

‘Book of Mormon’ smashes 1-day box office record - WSJ:

The seemingly unstoppable hit “The Book of Mormon” has broken another record — this time on the other side of the Atlantic.

The quirky, profane musical opened Thursday night to some critical bashing, but the next day earned the highest one-day gross in London theater history.

Between 10 a.m. and midnight Friday, 2,107,972 million pounds ($3.2 million) worth of tickets were sold at the box office, according to final figures. By comparison, the Broadway version only earned $1.5 million the day after it opened to rapturous reviews.