Career beginnings Cannibal! The Musical (1992–1994) In 1992, Stone, Parker, Jason McHugh and Ian Hardin founded a production company named the Avenging Conscience. The company was named after the
D. W. Griffith film by the same title (which was actively disliked by the group). Parker employed the cutout paper technique on Avenging Conscience's first production,
Jesus vs. Frosty (1992), an animated short pitting the religious figure against
Frosty the Snowman. The quartet created a three-minute
trailer for a fictional film titled
Alfred Packer: The Musical. The idea was based on an obsession Parker had with
Alfred Packer, a real nineteenth-century
prospector accused of
cannibalism. The trailer became something of a sensation among students at the school, leading Virgil Grillo, the chairman and founder of the university's film department, to convince the quartet to expand it to a feature-length film. Parker, under the pseudonym Juan Schwartz, was the film's star, director and co-producer. They intended to sell video rights to the film for $1 million and spend the remaining $900,000 to create another film.
The Spirit of Christmas and Orgazmo (1995–1997) Following the film's success, the group, without Hardin, moved to
Los Angeles. The trio created two separate pilots, spaced a year apart, and despite the approval of
Fox Broadcasting Company development executive
Pam Brady, the network disbanded the Fox Kids division. During the time between shooting the pilots for
Time Warped, Parker penned the script for a film titled
Orgazmo, which later entered production. Half of the budget for the picture came from a Japanese porn company called Kuki, who wanted to feature its performers in mainstream Western media. Due to the popularity of
Jesus vs. Santa, Parker and Stone wanted to turn the short into a television series later entitled
South Park, and offered the show to Fox. While Fox executives were enthusiastic about the premise, they didn't want to air a show that included the talking poo character
Mr. Hankey and passed on it after the duo refused to remove the character several times. Parker and Stone then entered negotiations with both
MTV and
Comedy Central. Parker preferred the show be produced by Comedy Central, fearing that MTV would turn it into a kids' show. When Comedy Central executive
Doug Herzog watched the short, he commissioned the development of the show into a series.
South Park Premiere and initial success (1997–1998) The pilot episode of
South Park was made on a budget of $300,000, and took between three and three and a half months to complete, and animation took place in a small room at Celluloid Studios, in
Denver, Colorado, during the summer of 1996. Similar to Parker and Stone's Christmas shorts, the original pilot was animated entirely with traditional
cut paper stop motion animation techniques. The idea for the town of South Park came from the real
Colorado basin of the same name where, according to the creators, a lot of folklore and news reports originated about "cattle mutilations and UFO and bigfoot sightings".
South Park premiered in August 1997 and immediately became one of the most popular shows on cable television, averaging consistently between 3.5 and 5.5 million viewers. The show transformed the then-fledgling Comedy Central into "a cable industry power almost overnight". At the time, the cable network had a low distribution of just 21 million subscribers. The resulting buzz led to the network earning an estimated $30 million in T-shirts sales alone before the first episode was even aired. An affiliate of the
MTV Network until then, Comedy Central decided, in part due to the success of
South Park, to have its own independent sales department. By the end of 1998, Comedy Central had sold more than $150 million worth of merchandise for the show, including T-shirts and dolls. Over the next few years, Comedy Central's viewership spiked largely due to
South Park, adding 3 million new subscribers in the first half of 1998 alone and allowed the network to sign international deals with networks in several countries. During the time, the team was also busy writing the
second and
third seasons of the series, the former of which Parker and Stone later described as "disastrous". As such, they figured the phenomenon would be over soon, and they decided to write a personal, fully committed animated film, which became the musical
South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut. Parker and Stone fought with the MPAA to keep the film R-rated; for months the ratings board insisted on the more prohibitive
NC-17. The film was only certified an R rating two weeks prior to its release, following contentious conversations between Parker/Stone, Rudin, and
Paramount Pictures. Parker felt very overwhelmed and overworked during the production process of the film, especially between April and the movie's opening in late June. He admitted that press coverage, which proclaimed the end of
South Park was near, bothered him. Parker and Stone state that subjecting themselves to a one-week deadline creates more spontaneity amongst themselves in the creative process, which they feel results in a funnier show. In 2012,
South Park cut back from producing 14 episodes per year (seven in the spring and seven in the fall) to a single run of 10 episodes in the fall, to allow the duo to explore other projects the rest of the year. The twenty-seventh season premiered on July 23, 2025.
South Park has expanded to music and video games. Comedy Central released various albums, including
Chef Aid: The South Park Album and ''
Mr. Hankey's Christmas Classics, in the late 1990s. The song "Chocolate Salty Balls" (as sung by the character Chef) was released as a single in the UK in 1998 to support the Chef Aid: The South Park Album
and became a number one hit. Parker and Stone had little to do with the development of video games based on the series that were released at this time, but took full creative control of South Park: The Stick of Truth, a 2014 video game based on the series that received positive reviews and for which they won the 2014 Writing in a Comedy
award and Stone (as Various
) was nominated for Performance in a Comedy, Supporting
by National Academy of Video Game Trade Reviewers (NAVGTR). Broadcast syndication rights to South Park
were sold in 2003, and all episodes are available for free full-length on-demand legal streaming on the official South Park Studios website. In 2007, the duo, with the help of their lawyer, Kevin Morris, cut a 50–50 joint venture with Comedy Central on all revenue not related to television; this includes digital rights to South Park'', as well as movies, soundtracks, T-shirts and other merchandise, in a deal worth $75 million.
Television and film projects ''That's My Bush!'' (2000–2001) In 2000, Parker and Stone began plotting a television sitcom starring the winner of the
2000 presidential election. The duo were "95 percent sure" that
Democratic candidate
Al Gore would win, and tentatively titled the show
Everybody Loves Al (a play on the show
Everybody Loves Raymond). Parker said the producers did not want to make fun of politics, but instead lampoon sitcoms. They threw a party the night of the election with the writers, with intentions to begin writing the following Monday and shooting the show in January 2001 with the inauguration. With the
confusion of whom the President would be, the show's production was pushed back. Although ''
That's My Bush!, which ran between April–May 2001, received a fair amount of publicity and critical notice, according to Stone and Parker, the cost per episode was too high at "about $1 million an episode". Comedy Central officially cancelled the series in August 2001 as a cost-cutting move; Stone was quoted as saying "A super-expensive show on a small cable network ... the economics of it were just not going to work." Comedy Central continued the show in reruns, considering it a creative and critical success. During this time, the duo also signed a deal with Shockwave.com to produce 39 animated online shorts, in which they would retain full artistic control; the result, Princess'', Which was rejected after only two episodes.
Team America (2002–2004) In 2002, the duo began working on
Team America: World Police, a satire of big-budget
action films and their associated
clichés and
stereotypes, with particular humorous emphasis on the global implications of the
politics of the United States.
Team America was produced using a crew of about 200 people; sometimes four people at a time were needed to manipulate a marionette. Although the filmmakers hired three dozen highly skilled marionette operators, execution of some very simple acts by the marionettes proved to be very difficult, with a simple shot such as a character drinking taking a half-day to complete successfully. The film was barely completed in time for its October release date, but reviews were positive and the film made a modest sum at the box office.
Broadway and movie studio The Book of Mormon (2011–present) Parker and Stone, alongside writer-composer
Robert Lopez, began working on a musical centering on
Mormonism during the production of
Team America. Lopez, a fan of
South Park and creator of the puppet musical
Avenue Q, met with the duo after a performance of the musical, where they conceived the idea. The musical, titled
The Book of Mormon: The Musical of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was worked on over a period of various years; working around their
South Park schedule, they flew between
New York City and Los Angeles often, first writing songs for the musical in 2006. and the crew embarked on the first of a half-dozen workshops that would take place during the next four years. After a frantic series of rewrites, rehearsals, and previews,
The Book of Mormon received broad critical praise for the plot, score, actors' performances, direction and choreography. A
cast recording of the original Broadway production became the highest-charting Broadway cast album in over four decades. The musical received nine
Tony Awards, one for
Best Musical, and a
Grammy Award for
Best Musical Theater Album. The production has since expanded to two national tours, a
Chicago production, and a UK production, and Parker and Stone have confirmed a film adaption is in pre-production. The first episode was posted to
YouTube on October26, 2020. The team was originally assembled for a film project that was interrupted due to the pandemic, who made the video based on a series of impressions that Serafinowicz developed of a "sassy"
Donald Trump. The creators have a handful of shorter videos alongside a 15-minute first episode that may be turned into an ongoing series, film, or other type of project. After the
HBO Max streaming rights expired in late June 2025, on July 21, 2025, Stone and Parker announced a five-year agreement with
Paramount+ to stream the series exclusively and to have 10 episodes produced per year. After signing the deal with Paramount, Stone and Parker became
billionaires. In September 2021, Stone and Parker reached an agreement to purchase
Casa Bonita for $3.1 million. A group named "Save Casa Bonita" filed an objection to Stone and Parker's purchase, pointing out that they had in fact made an offer first. Their objection was later withdrawn, and the sale was completed by November 19. They spent $40 million renovating the restaurant and hired Chef Dana Rodriguez to update the menu. The restaurant had a
soft opening on May 26, 2023. In early June, Casa Bonita began taking reservations although a formal opening date had not been set. Stone and Parker amended the employee compensation system at Casa Bonita, removing the need for wait staff to earn tips, instead paying every employee $30 per hour, much higher than the Colorado minimum wage, $13.65. In January 2022, it was announced Stone will produce an
untitled film with Parker through their now-renamed production company Park County and
Kendrick Lamar and
Dave Free's multi-disciplinary media company
PGLang. The film will mark the first theatrical collaboration, and second overall, between Parker, Stone, Lamar, and Free. Parker and Stone developed the
deepfakes used in the
music video for Lamar's
promotional single "
The Heart Part 5" (2022) through their
artificial intelligence startup studio
Deep Voodoo. In March 2023, it was reported that Parker will direct the film. It will be distributed by
Paramount Pictures.
Casa Bonita controversy On October 30, 2025, 57 performers at Stone and Parker's
Lakewood, Colorado restaurant
Casa Bonita went on strike for at least three days after alleging that Parker and Stone paid them unfair wages and subjected them to a less safe working environment.
Actors' Equity Association president
Brooke Shields also criticized Stone and Parker as well, ==Personal life==