Career beginnings Cannibal! The Musical (1992–1994) In 1992, Parker, Stone, McHugh, and Ian Hardin founded a production company named the Avenging Conscience, named after the
D. W. Griffith film by the same name, which all four actively disliked. Parker again 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
Alferd Packer: The Musical. The idea was based on an obsession Parker had with
Alferd Packer, a real nineteenth-century
prospector accused of
cannibalism. The trailer became somewhat 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, sans 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.
Brian Graden (then at Fox) liked this short and asked Parker and Stone to produce a video greeting card (for which he paid with his own money) that he could send to friends. Both
Jesus vs. Frosty and
Jesus vs. Santa had
The Spirit of Christmas as opening credits. Graden sent the film on
VHS to several industry executives in Hollywood; meanwhile, someone digitized the short film and put it on the internet, where it became one of the first
viral videos. As
Jesus vs. Santa became more popular, Parker and Stone began talks of developing the short into a television series called
South Park. They first pitched the show to Fox, but the network refused to pick it up due to not wanting to air a show that included the talking poo character
Mr. Hankey. The two were initially skeptical of possible television deals, noting that previous endeavors had not turned out to be successful, When Comedy Central executive
Doug Herzog watched the short, he commissioned for it to be developed 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; animation took place in a small room at Celluloid Studios, in
Denver, Colorado, during the summer of 1996. Similarly 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 "UFO sightings, and cattle mutilations, and Bigfoot sightings." At the time, Comedy Central had a low distribution of just 21 million subscribers. The company marketed the show aggressively before its launch, billing it as "why they created the
V-chip". 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 musical. 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 overwhelmed and overworked during the production process of the film, especially between April and the film's opening in late June. He admitted that press coverage, which proclaimed the end of
South Park was near, bothered him. Parker and Stone continue to write, direct, and voice most characters on
South Park. Over time, the show has adopted a unique production process, in which an entire episode is written, animated and broadcast in one week. 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 show's twenty-third season premiered on September 25, 2019.
South Park has continued, becoming an enterprise worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The franchise has also 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 shared (with Eric Fenstermaker) the 2014 Writing In A Comedy
and Parker won the Performance in a Comedy, Supporting
award 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 films, 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. the main goal was to parody sitcom tropes, such as a lovable main character, the sassy maid, and the wacky neighbor. 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 and May 2001, received a fair amount of publicity and critical notice, according to Stone and Parker, the cost per episode was too high, "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'', 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. The film was inspired by the 1960s British marionette series,
Thunderbirds. Starring puppets,
Team America was produced using a crew of about 200 people, which sometimes required four people at a time 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 film studio to receive a star on the
Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2013
The Book of Mormon 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 several 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,
UK production, and as of 2014 Parker and Stone had confirmed that a film adaption was in pre-production. On April 13, 2016,
Universal Pictures announced that Parker would voice the villain Balthazar Bratt in
Despicable Me 3. The film, released in June 2017, was Parker's first voice role not scripted by either him or Matt Stone. In the midst of the
COVID-19 pandemic, Parker, Stone, and
Peter Serafinowicz created a web series,
Sassy Justice. The series uses
deepfake technology to insert unrelated celebrities and politicians into the fictional world of a television reporter. 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, Parker and Stone 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, Parker and Stone became
billionaires. In September 2021, Parker and Stone reached an agreement to purchase
Casa Bonita for $3.1 million. A group named "Save Casa Bonita" filed an objection to Parker and Stone'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. Parker and Stone 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 Parker will produce a film entitled
Whitney Springs with Stone 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 Parker and Stone'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 (AEA) president
Brooke Shields also criticized Parker and Stone as well, ==Personal life==