Trey Parker and Matt Stone Say They Can Only Do Six ‘South Park’ Episodes Per Season Because They’re Basically the Rolling Stones Now

If you start Trey Parker and Matt Stone up, they’ll never stop – they’ll just take two-year breaks here and there. 

When Parker and Stone first launched the TV show adaptation of their crudely animated, gleefully crass, Christmas-themed short films about kids in Colorado accidentally unleashing a killer snowman on the town and Jesus squaring off with Santa Claus in 1997, the twenty-somethings immediately established themselves as the biggest rock stars of cartoon counter-culture. Parents banned their children from watching South Park while conservative Christian groups lobbied to have the show pulled from the airwaves. Teens disseminated bootleg VHS tapes around their schools in secret. Fans tattooed their favorite characters all over their bodies. For all intents and purposes, South Park was animated TV comedy rock and roll, thumbing its nose at authority and flaunting its creative freedom. 

Then, much like early rock and roll superstars, South Park and its creators got older, slowed down and grew mainstream to the point where Parker and Stone have devoted the bulk of their time and energy over the last two years to children’s entertainment with the Casa Bonita rehab project. Today, Parker and Stone’s output in their flagship series seriously lags behind their early pace, just as Mick Jagger and Keith Richards don’t exactly play 180 stadium shows per year now that they’re in their eighties. 

In a recent interview with Vanity Fair, Parker and Stone addressed many South Park fans’ criticisms that new episodes are too few and too far between. “We’re the Rolling Stones, man—we’re trying to get out five, six nights a year,” Stone said. “We could do more, but I don’t think it’d be better.”

Now, to be fair to the South Park fanbase whose patience has been wearing thin ever since South Park transitioned into this two-special, six-episode season format in 2020, Parker and Stone are actually less prolific than the octogenarian rock and roll legends – in 2024, the only South Park release was the well-received Paramount+ special South Park: The End of Obesity back in May, so Parker and Stone are missing Jagger and Richards' mark of “five, six nights a year” by at least 400 percent. 

And, if the shortened seasons weren't bad enough, the wait in between the six-episode entries has been increasing year-over-year – Parker and Stone revealed that South Park Season 27 won't come out until 2025, which will likely place the premiere date at least two years after the finale of Season 26. So, by the time fans start asking questions about Season 28, Parker, Stone and South Park's output will probably be closer to the contemporary work of Brian Jones than any of the surviving Stones.