page_title: Trey Parker
section_title: Bigger, Longer & Uncut and continued success
hierarchical_section_title: Trey Parker / Career / South Park / Bigger, Longer & Uncut and continued success
caption_attribution_description: Matt Stone and Trey Parker at The Amazing Meeting on January 20, 2007
context_page_description: Randolph Severn "Trey" Parker III is an American actor, voice actor, animator, writer, producer, director, and composer. He is known for co-creating South Park and co-developing The Book of Mormon with his creative partner Matt Stone. Parker was interested in film and music as a child and at high school, and attended the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he met Stone. The two collaborated on various short films, and starred in the feature-length musical Cannibal! The Musical.
  Parker and Stone moved to Los Angeles and wrote their second film, Orgazmo. Before the premiere of the film, South Park premiered on Comedy Central in August 1997. The duo possess full creative control of the show, and have produced music and video games based on it. A film based on the series, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, received good reviews from both critics and fans. Parker went on to write, produce, direct, and star in the satirical action film Team America: World Police, and, after several years of development, The Book of Mormon premiered on Broadway to good reviews. In 2013, Parker and Stone established their own production studio, Important Studios.
context_section_description: Parker and Stone signed a deal with Comedy Central in April 1998 that contracted the duo to producing South Park episodes until 1999, gave them a slice of the lucrative spinoff merchandising the show generated within its first year, as well as an unspecified seven-figure cash bonus to bring the show to the big screen, in theaters. 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 very 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. South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut opened in cinemas in June 1999 and received critical acclaim while grossing $83 million at the box office.
  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. Although initial reviews for the show were negative in reference to its crass humor, the series has received numerous accolades, including five Primetime Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award, and numerous inclusions in various publications' lists of greatest television shows. Though its viewership is lower than it was at the height of its popularity in its earliest seasons, South Park remains one of the highest-rated series on Comedy Central. 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. As of 2019 the show is renewed through 2022, when it will reach its twenty-sixth season. 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.
caption: Parker (left) and Matt Stone (right) continue to do most of the writing, directing and voice acting on South Park.
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