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Onstage and backstage workers at the Casa Bonita immersive restaurant, owned by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, have voted unanimously to unionize with Actors’ Equity Association and IATSE Local 7, it was announced Friday.

“Today, we are proud that we stood as a group and said clearly: We want to make Casa Bonita better,” the workers leading the unionization effort said in a statement. “We love Casa Bonita, and already give our all to providing our guests with an unforgettable experience. When it is a safer, fairer place to work, we will be able to better focus on doing our jobs knowing we are protected, respected and valued. We knew that the best way to make that happen was as unionized workers, and this landslide vote confirms that we will. We are eager to take our place at the bargaining table soon.”

The iconic restaurant, based in Lakewood,...

During Alyah Chanelle Scott’s first trip to Los Angeles in 2020, she was feeling lost in her fledgling career. Straight out of college, she’d been cast in the national tour of The Book of Mormon, the musical comedy from South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker about Mormon missionaries preaching to a far-flung Ugandan village, playing an African convert named Nabulungi. The job meant eight shows a week, Tuesday through Sunday, and a day off on Monday that offered just enough time for the cast to catch a...

Over at Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s massively renovated Casa Bonita, Christmas came early — and so did Mr. Hankey.

When Parker and Stone purchased their favorite Denver-area Mexican restaurant/entertainment megaplex in 2021 for $3.1 million, they must have known that they were purchasing a giant dump. Given the crumbling infrastructure and quietly deadly electrical work at the Lakewood, Colorado Casa Bonita location first made famous by the 2003 South Park episode “Casa Bonita,” the show’s creators likely knew that they would have to flush out a great deal of decay from the 52,000-square-foot cathedral where they made so many of their priceless childhood memories.

It ended up taking more than two years and upwards of $40 million for Parker and Stone to fully renovate and rehab Casa Bonita, so, with that much money down the crapper, you’d hope that the current state of the restaurant would be downright pristine. And yet,...

There really just isn't another movie on this planet quite like "Team America: World Police." Directed by "South Park" co-creator Trey Parker from a script by Parker, fellow "South Park" co-creator Matt Stone, and Pam Brady, "Team America" is loosely a riff on the 1960s British TV series "Thunderbirds," using marionettes and various other forms of puppetry to create the entire movie. It's weird, it's vulgar, and the vast majority of the jokes have aged like milk, but there is some incredible craftsmanship on display and it's an interesting time capsule for the "edgy" comedy of 2004 and global politics at the time. "Team America" is about an international counterterrorism team taking on North Korean dictator Kim Jung Il, who himself is represented in a cartoonish puppet form. There's lots of swearing, some puppet-on-puppet violence, and even an explicit puppet sex scene, and somehow it's also apparently Jodie Foster's favorite movie.

In the two-part "South Park" episode "Cartoon Wars" from 2006, it's revealed that an upcoming episode of "Family Guy" will feature the Prophet Muhammad as a character. The citizens of the titular town become terrified over the thought of military retaliation from various Islam-majority countries, since depictions of Muhammad are typically seen as blasphemous to many Muslim adherents. The episode came in the wake of a 2005 controversy when the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published comic strips that depicted Muhammad, sparking protests and even riots.

By the end of the episode, the citizens of South Park are literally burying their heads in the sand, trying to prove that they haven't been looking at the "Family Guy" Muhammad episode. "South Park" creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker were trying to state, in their clumsy, cynical way, that it's silly to get offended by such things, and no one should be sensitive to the beliefs of others.

Business at Casa Bonita is currently booming. If you want to book a table for Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s novelty Mexican restaurant, the earliest reservation available as of right now is in mid-January. But don’t let the packed crowds fool you, it’s seemingly still a long way from turning a profit.

As we’ve previously mentioned, it could take Parker and Stone more than half a century of serving meals to make their $40 million investment back. But that estimate only accounts for the food being sold, not any merchandising tie-ins. And if there’s anyone who knows about hawking useless licensed merchandise, it’s the creators of South Park.

The Casa Bonita empire has already been making money from non-food side hustles, including the documentary ¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!, which played in select theaters before landing on Paramount+. And there’s also El Mercado at Casa Bonita,...

Despite the disabled community largely embracing the positive portrayal on South Park, a disturbingly widespread TikTok movement is trying to use Timmy to turn wheelchair users into a punchline.

The biggest problem with South Park’s darkly satirical portrayal of American society is that, no matter how thoughtful, purposeful and empathetic Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s approach to parodying real-life issues can be, the show’s indulgently crass sense of humor and consistent appeal to the lowest-common denominator means that the nuanced intention behind any South Park joke will go over the heads of some of the show’s biggest fans.

Put simply, many, many people who watch South Park think that they’re supposed to connect and agree with Eric Cartman the most out of any character, and in an age where social media further strips away the context around most of South Park’s more touchy takes on society,...

According to a rumor spread by a couple Casa Bonita customers, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone once treated every dancer at their favorite gentleman’s club to a free car. If that club was the Peppermint Hippo, then I sure hope they sprung for SUVs.

Right now, the world of dinner entertainment enthusiasts is enjoying the consequences of Parker and Stone’s hilarious relationship with their ample disposable income by flocking to the pair’s “Mexican food Disneyland,” Casa Bonita in Lakewood, Colorado. By their own account, Parker and Stone have poured at least $40 million into their rehab of the towering cathedral of cliff divers and sopapillas that they made world-famous in the 2003 South Park episode “Casa Bonita,” and the massive, three-year renovation project they launched after saving their childhood haunt from sure financial failure has already garnered rave reviews from the many podcasts and publications interested...

If you’re struggling to take a joke in stride, try Lizzo!

In the most recent South Park special, South Park: The End of Obesity, Trey Parker and Matt Stone dissected the obesity epidemic by satirizing the rapid rise of semaglutide injections, the most popular of which is the oft-discussed diabetes medication Ozempic. Parker and Stone’s biggest targets were the ineffectual and imbalanced American healthcare system and the processed food megacompanies pushing sugar in their mass-produced products, but they had jokes to spare for upper-class moms with inappropriately exposed midriffs, the entire country of Pakistan and America’s favorite body-positive pop singer Melissa Viviane Jefferson, better known by her brand name Lizzo.

In South Park: The End of Obesity, Parker and Stone draw attention to the fact that insurance companies refuse to cover semaglutide injections as a weight-loss method for patients struggling with obesity, meaning that only the wealthy...

For generations of families in Denver, Casa Bonita was more than just a restaurant—it was an experience. Perched atop a pink stucco tower that could be seen from all across the city, Casa Bonita drew people in with the promise of culinary delights and whimsical entertainment within. Inside, visitors of all ages were transported to a world of make-believe, exploring “haunted” caves, watching daring cliff divers plunge into the pool, and getting lost in the labyrinthine corridors.

Two eager patrons who could often be found soaking up the atmosphere of Casa Bonita in their youth were Trey Parker and Matt Stone. As co-creators of the beloved animated series South Park, the pair celebrated their love for the eccentric establishment in a famous 2003 episode. Yet while the show brought Casa Bonita worldwide fame, by the 2010s the once-grand destination had fallen into disrepair. When the pandemic eventually forced its permanent closure,...

It’s a well-established fact that the respective creators of South Park and Family Guy hate each other, and that’s to be expected — theater geeks just love drama.

The animated comedy community is rife with rivalries, and some are much friendlier than others. Ever since the Golden Age of Warner Bros. and Disney, the cartoon business has always had a healthy spirit of competition between the power players that can occasionally spill over into ugly acrimony — like how Seth MacFarlane responded to a Simpsons gag about Peter Griffin being a clone of Homer by having Quagmire straight up sexually assault Marge and murder her family. However, MacFarlane’s most heated and most personal feud somehow isn’t with the predecessor series to which his Family Guy is so often compared, but with the outspoken creative duo of Trey Parker and Matt Stone who made their feelings about MacFarlane’s...

Cher. Julie Andrews. Audra McDonald. Al Pacino. Bette Midler.

Of all the storied entertainers one award away from achieving Egot status — that is, a performer or creative who has won a competitive Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony — two near-winners are not like the others: South Park overlords Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

So how have the pair — famed for gags like “The Crack Baby Athletic Association,” the “HUMANCENTiPAD,” and of course, sending Lemmiwinks the gerbil on a trip up Mr. Slave’s ass — managed to go get closer to an Egot than Meryl Streep or Denzel Washington? Well, by making excellent television for more than two decades and taking a brief detour onto Broadway.

Winning their first Primetime Emmy Award for South Park in 2005, an achievement the duo have repeated four more times since, Stone and Parker became serious Egot contenders in 2011, when their musical, The Book of Mormon, made its Broadway debut.

Ever since Family Guy showed up to blow up The Simpsons’ spot on New Year’s Eve 1999, Matt Groening’s show has been throwing lighthearted jabs from across the Fox schedule at their rival series every few years. But, just like everything The Simpsons has ever done, Seth MacFarlane copied them — just in a grosser, more drawn-out, less funny way.

The “friendly” rivalry between Family Guy and The Simpsons is drastically different from the acrimony between Family Guy and other shows such as South Park. While Trey Parker and Matt Stone set out to explain to their viewers exactly why Family Guy was bottom-tier comedy in the classic two-part episode “Cartoon Wars” in 2006, the writers of The Simpsons decided to take a lighter touch as they satirized the bizarro-copy of their series with background gags and throwaway lines that did little more than acknowledge the “inspiration” behind Family Guy’s entire premise.

After 30 years of partnership, the two South Park creators’ #1 goal is still to crack each other up — I guess they’re good buddies, guy.

When multiple genius artists have been in a state of constant collaboration for even a fraction of the time that Trey Parker and Matt Stone have spent making their beloved TV shows, movies, Broadway musicals, video games and Denver-area dinner entertainment experiences, the usual expectation is that the weight of massive success, wealth and expectations will drive the partners to despise each other, à la The Beatles, Monty Python or Siskel and Ebert. Thankfully, the duo that got paired up for a partner project while they were both enrolled in a film course at the University of Colorado Boulder has shown no sign of the internal strife that’s broken up so many incredible artistic collaborations through the years, and, if blowing $40 million to fix up...

Jodie Foster's career has been famously wild. As a child, she appeared in lightweight Disney films like "Napoleon and Samantha" and "Freaky Friday," while also taking the world by surprise playing an underage sex worker in Martin Scorsese's "Taxi Driver." Throughout the 1980s, she successfully continued acting as she grew, appearing in films like "Foxes," "The Hotel New Hampshire," and "The Accused," for which she won her first Academy Award. In 1991, Foster won her second Oscar for playing FBI cadet Clarice Starling in Jonathan Demme's bleak serial killer thriller "The Silence of the Lambs," one of the few films to win "The Big Five" Oscars. That same year, Foster made her directorial debut with the child-prodigy drama "Little Man Tate."

From then on, Foster was a Hollywood staple, leading multiple high-profile studio dramas like "Maverick," Robert Zemeckis' "Contact," and "Anna and the King." She also worked with...

Photo Credit: Paramount Pictures After their Comedy Central show South Park premiered in 1997, Trey Parker and Matt Stone became lightning rods for controversy. That extended to their other projects, too — especially Team America: World Police. That film, which was done using puppet animation, was released 20 years ago, in October 2004. A quick history lesson, for those of you who may not remember: By the fall of 2004, America had been fighting a war in Iraq for a year and a half, with no clear end in sight. So, yes, a film — even an animated film — portraying a secret American military force fighting around the world attracted its fair share of controversy. Of course, Parker and Stone took it all in stride. When the movie was released, they told us the real irony about the controversy is that the film was written and in production well before the war even started. (Click on...

As you’ve probably heard by now, last week Elon Musk staged a tech event heralding his bold new vision for the world of tomorrow. Unfortunately, that “bold vision” was really just designs from a 20-year-old Will Smith movie that only has 57 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. You may as well try to base a futuristic utopia on Michael Bay’s The Island, or Surrogates starring Bruce Willis.

But the big star of the “We, Robot” event was Optimus, Musk’s exciting new artificial intelligence creation that can do our chores for us, throw dance parties and even serve drinks. Musk suggested that Optimus could one day be cheaper to buy than a car. But at least no Toyota Corollas have ever tried to murder John Connor.

It later turned out that these Optimus units were really being controlled by human beings, a detail that was conspicuously omitted from Musk’s presentation,...

The documentary may be finished, but the story of Casa Bonita is far from over.

Just weeks after the release of ¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!, the acclaimed film chronicling the highs and lows of Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s extensive (and expensive) renovation of the iconic Colorado eatery, some major news concerning the future of Casa Bonita dropped.

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The restaurant’s in-house performers, including cliff divers, puppeteers, actors and magicians, are moving to unionize with IATSE and Actors’ Equity Association. According to a union press release, employees are simply looking for “fair pay” as well as “benefits” and “clearer communication between workers and management.” All of which sounds pretty reasonable.

They also have concerns about “insufficient training” and “abusive patrons emboldened by alcohol.” And really, who amongst us would want to perform a children’s puppet show for crowd of rowdy South Park fans who have been day-drinking...

Entertainers and crewmembers at the Casa Bonita immersive restaurant, owned by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, are looking to unionize with Actors’ Equity and IATSE.

The restaurant, based in Lakewood, Colorado, a suburb of Denver, recently reopened after being bought out of bankruptcy by Parker and Stone. The restaurant features cliff divers, actors, puppeteers, magicians and more as part of the dining experience, supported by crewmembers.

These workers are looking to unionize due to a range of concerns, starting with safety at work, and including insufficient training, as well as fair pay, greater benefits, and better communication between workers and management. The workers asked for, but did not receive, voluntary recognition, and are now filing with the National Labor Relations Board for an election.

The bargaining unit includes around 60 performers, divided into wet and dry entertainers, and about 20 crewmembers, who are looking for representation with IATSE.

Casa...

When news broke that the South Park guys were making a Broadway musical, few would have guessed it would go on to win nine Tony Awards. Trey Parker and Matt Stone were probably surprised as well, since their original intention for Book of Mormon was to make an animated movie as a follow-up to one of their biggest movie successes.

That’s what one of the musical’s original stars, Josh Gad, told Jesse Tyler Ferguson on his Dinner’s On Me podcast, via Indiewire. “Trey and Matt thought that they were going to do it as an animated film. It was going to be their follow-up to Team America. And we ended it,” Gad explained about a live reading of the script. “The response was effusive, albeit people were definitely taken aback and shocked. And they had a huddle and they decided in that moment, ‘Let’s try this as a live theatrical thing.

As of this week, it’s officially been 20 years since the release of Team America: World Police, the puppet action movie made by famed restaurateurs Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Sure, it’s not perfect, but at least Team America gave us one of the greatest sex scenes in movie history, and one of the greatest outraged Sean Penn letters in “Sean Penn being outraged” history.

At the time, a lot of fans were expecting Team America to be a blistering takedown of George W. Bush’s calamitous foreign policy, but instead they got a movie that was more focused on satirizing Jerry Bruckheimer-produced blockbusters and lampooning self-involved celebrity political activism. As a result, there were a number of cameos from marionette versions of A-list Hollywood stars, including the aforementioned Penn, Susan Sarandon and Alec Baldwin. But the breakout star of the film was, of course, Matt Damon.

The portrayal of Damon,...

Before it became a Broadway smash hit, “The Book of Mormon” could have gone animated.

Josh Gad, who originated the role of Elder Arnold Cunningham in the 2011 production, said during Sony Music Entertainment’s “Dinner’s On Me” podcast that co-writers Trey Parker and Matt Stone originally set out to make “Book of Mormon” in the vein of beloved animated satirical film “Team America: World Police.”

However, after the live reading of the script, it became clear that “Book of Mormon” was best suited to Broadway.

“Trey and Matt thought that they were going to do it as an animated film. It was going to be their follow up to ‘Team America.’ And we ended it,” Gad said to host Jesse Tyler Ferguson. “The response was effusive. I’ll be it, people were definitely taken aback and shocked. And they had a huddle and they decided in that moment, let...

With the way streaming services handle their most beloved shows, South Park creator Matt Stone almost misses the time when the biggest problem with TV was some nipple-rubbing a-hole at the cable company.

When South Park first premiered on Comedy Central in 1997, Trey Parker and Stone saw plenty of examples out there for how to do an animated, adult-friendly comedy show right. Parker and Stone looked up to the comedy geniuses behind The Simpsons, and they revered Mike Judge for what he managed to do with Beavis and Butt-Head. And, ultimately, the business model behind these shows was simple, effective and easy for Parker and Stone to imitate: pump out roughly 20 solid, inspired and consistently funny episodes per year, keep the ratings high and secure that season extension at the end of it all.

As long as the show was funny every week, people would keep tuning in, the show...

If you love stories about wealthy cartoonists pouring millions of dollars into Mexican novelty restaurants riddled with building code violations, boy do we have the movie for you. The new documentary ¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor! chronicles South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s efforts to renovate Denver’s giantest, pinkest eatery, in defiance of all common sense and financial logic.

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The movie is undoubtedly funny, engaging and even heartwarming, but it also feels like a fairly calculated promotional tool for the restaurant which, perhaps not coincidentally, opened to the public in the very same week that the documentary was released.

According to the film’s director, Arthur Bradford, there’s a very good reason for this. Speaking with The Wrap, Bradford revealed that the project began, not as a feature film, but as an “online marketing video” for Casa Bonita, one that could be shown inside the...

While securing reservations to Casa Bonita is about as easy as scoring front-row tickets to an alien autopsy performed by Taylor Swift, at least we can all get a taste (not literally) of what it’s like to visit the novelty Mexican restaurant, thanks to the new documentary ¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!.

The acclaimed doc is now available on Paramount+, the streaming home of South Park and Frasier Crane’s nonstop bullshit. It’s certainly an entertaining and funny account of Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s efforts to re-open the troubled venue, but it’s also surprisingly sincere and even heartwarming, ending on a bittersweet note that oddly parallels the classic South Park episode that made the restaurant world famous.

The doc also largely avoids the most highly-publicized controversy surrounding Casa Bonita 2.0: the issue of employee compensation.

In some ways, this omission may not be all that surprising,...

When “South Park” creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker thought they might buy the beloved Denver restaurant Casa Bonita, one of the first calls they made was to director Arthur Bradford. The two Comedy Central powerhouses have worked with the filmmaker for nearly a decade and a half, going back to when he directed their 2011 making-of documentary, “Six Days to Air.”

“Whenever they had a new project or just something that seemed interesting to film, I was always after them to let me do it,” Bradford told TheWrap. The director is currently on the set of Stone and Parker’s upcoming live-action comedy with Kendrick Lamar, working on another making-of film.

Initially, “¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!” was envisioned to be an “online marketing video” that could be shown as people waited for their food. But as Bradford and his long-standing photography director P.H. O’Brien worked on the project, it became...

October has arrived, impossibly. Yes it’s already fall, and that means it’s getting darker earlier and earlier. Which means the ideal window of time in which to cozy up with a great movie is getting longer and longer. This month has no lack of options for what to watch on streaming, with new movies on Netflix, Max, Prime Video, Peacock and Hulu that are well worth checking out. Below, we’ve rounded up the best of the best, from brand new horror movies to comedies to some of the year’s biggest films that are arriving on your favorite streaming service for the first time.

Check out our picks for the best new movies streaming in October 2024 below.

“¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!” Casa Bonita, the Lakewood restaurant, purchased by the creators of “South Park” in 2021, renovated for reopening in Lakewood, Colorado on Thursday, May 25, 2023. (Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)

Paramount+ – Oct.

Production is underway on the most unlikely comedy collaboration since Terrance and Phillip made peace with the Queef Sisters.

Back in April, Paramount Pictures CEO Brian Robbins announced that his company had officially greenlit a comedy film from South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone and rap superstar Kendrick Lamar, saying of the still-untitled screenplay, “This script is one of the funniest, craziest and most original scripts we’ve ever read, and it’s certain to create some fireworks when it hits theaters on July 4th, 2025.”

Almost six months later, we still know very little about the film — other than the fact that, contrary to Robbins’ other comments that day, the movie is disappointingly not a musical — but, earlier this week, residents of Pomona, California caught a sneak peek of the project’s set as Paramount and their unlikely team began filming.

Written by South Park veteran and Adult Swim legend Vernon Chatman,...

It is that time of the year when we once again find ourselves on the precipice of another year of new film releases. This is when we look forward eagerly to the films scheduled for release in the coming year. There is probably likely something coming out at some point during the year that should be of interest to everyone (at least that’s what most studios are hoping). As always, there will be the usual sequels and big blockbusters set as tent-pole releases, as well as a plethora of additional titles in multiple genres to choose from. We hope you find this list of the upcoming films of 2025 and their release dates useful and that it helps you plan what you’re going to look forward to throughout the years.

The list below gathers all of the titles we know that are coming in 2025 by their current release date.

If you can’t make the trip to Denver to eat at the famous Casa Bonita restaurant, watching the documentary “¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!” is the next best thing. And you can do it very soon, as the doc is hitting Paramount+ on Wednesday, the streaming service announced Monday.

“¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!” tells the story of the “rise, fall, and revival” of the iconic Lakewood, Colo. landmark, which opened in 1974, went bankrupt in 2021, and was rescued by “South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who grew up going to Casa Bonita and immortalized it in a classic 2003 “South Park” episode. The documentary covers Parker and Stone’s ambitious attempt to restore the restaurant to its former glory, which they approach with the same intensity documented in the Emmy-nominated making-of-“South Park” documentary “6 Days to Air,” which shares producers with “¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!” The project quickly becomes a...

Start planning your fiestas now: Hit documentary “¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!” will launch on Paramount+ this week.

The film tells the story of how “South Park” creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker worked to save beloved Colorado-based Mexican restaurant Casa Bonita, which was immortalized in a classic episode of their animated show.

“¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!” will have its streaming debut on Paramount+ Wednesday, October 2 in the United States. The film has had a very limited theatrical run, but it has performed exceptionally well for a documentary, bringing in just shy of $125,000. “¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!” has been one of the highest-grossing documentaries of the year.

IndieWire previously reported that after the film played on just a single screen in Denver, it had already achieved the highest per-screen average for any documentary film released theatrically in 2024.

Arthur Bradford directed “¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!,” and the film shows how “South Park...

Scientologists have a series of acronyms and codes to refer to the various threats to their plans for world domination, with the kind of “joking & degrading” featured on shows like South Park shortened to “J&d.” Gotta protect the head Fp somehow.

When Trey Parker and Matt Stone first started taking shots at the aggressively litigious and rapidly growing religious and political organization the Church of Scientology in the classic South Park Season 12 episode “Trapped in the Closet,” they unintentionally sparked one of the show’s most disappointing controversies that led to beloved series regular Isaac Hayes leaving the show for good, shortly before his death. As one of the many celebrities whom Scientologists successfully recruited into their ranks, Hayes supposedly took issue with South Park repeating the official Scientology creation myth verbatim and educating the world on what Scientologists actually believe.

Hayes’ son Isaac Hayes III has long argued that,...

¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!, the new documentary about Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s restaurant side-hustle/$40 million midlife crisis, is a big hit with audiences so far. Which isn’t all that surprising considering that cable TV has already proven that people like both South Park and watching strangers go through hellish ordeals in restaurants.

Well, soon we’re going to be getting yet another feature-length doc about the exploits of Parker and Stone, thanks to good old physical media. And it also involves the culinary arts — to some degree at least.

Parker’s directorial debut, 1993’s Cannibal! The Musical, is receiving its first ever Blu-Ray release, meaning that we’ll finally be able to see the alleged flesh-eating exploits of Alfred Packer in high definition. And just imagine how crisp the audio will be on songs like “Let’s Build a Snowman” and “Shpadoinkle.”

The film is actually being released by two different companies.

When Josh Gad joined the voice cast of Disney's animated movie "Frozen," which came out in 2013, he probably didn't think that he was about to become part of one of the biggest pop culture juggernauts in recent history. Both the original and its 2019 sequel, "Frozen II," made buckets of money at the box office, while the first movie also scored an Academy Award for best original song (thanks to the inescapable earworm "Let It Go"). Plus, Gad's character Olaf, a living snowman who wants to experience summer, became a breakout success on his own. So does Gad have any regrets about his "Frozen" experience? Yes, actually. He wishes he'd changed his voice a little more for the character.

"If I could do it all over again, I would not have lent that snowman my voice. I would've created a different voice," Gad said while participating in an interview at Fan Expo Canada,...

What’s the secret acting trick to nailing a part in a Trey Parker and Matt Stone project? Shut the hell up and say the lines Trey Parker and Matt Stone wrote, of course.

When the South Park creators’ long-awaited comedic musical about their favorite friendly religious order, The Book of Mormon, premiered at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre in 2011, it was an instant hit. Critics and audiences praised the playwriting and the performances, specifically that of Frozen star Josh Gad in the role of Elder Cunningham. Then, when Gad left the show in 2012, the Book of Mormon producers scrambled to find an actor who could handle the chaotic script from Parker and Stone while most closely imitating Gad’s immaculate performance, hiring future Miracle Workers star Jon Bass to do his best Gad impression.

Very quickly, the creative team of The Book of Mormon realized that no one could...

Among the many changes that South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone instituted when they acquired the dinner entertainment megaplex Casa Bonita in Lakewood, Colorado was a complete overhaul of the cuisine — the cuttlefish and vanilla paste must be on the secret menu.

Earlier this year, the Walt Disney Company created a PR catastrophe for themselves when they moved to dismiss a wrongful death lawsuit filed against them by a widower whose wife died after eating allergen-contaminated food at a Disney Parks restaurant on the grounds that the a clause in the Disney+ subscriber agreement signed by the plaintiff barred him from pursuing any legal action against the company except through third-party arbitration. Apparently, Parker and Stone looked at that fiasco and felt that Disney’s only misstep was putting that clause in their streaming agreement rather than on the reservations page.

When the Casa Bonita finally ended their...

Casa Bonita just might be the most famous restaurant on the planet right now, thanks to the South Park episode that made it look like a pink paradise on Earth, as well as the upcoming, critically acclaimed documentary, which chronicles Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s Kitchen Nightmares-esque efforts to restore the tragically shuttered Colorado institution.

The famed Mexican eatery re-opened its doors back in 2023, but it’s technically been in a “beta-testing” phase this whole time, meaning that those wanting to wolf down tacos while watching cliff divers had to try and score an invite via a lottery system, in which names were randomly selected from a lengthy waitlist. Kind of like scoring a golden ticket to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, but without all of the child endangerment.

But it was recently announced that reservations would finally be made available to the public beginning today, Monday, September 16th.

For a few days, Trey Parker was self-admittedly “giddy.” The co-creator of South Park, one half of the duo behind the Broadway juggernaut The Book of Mormon and the man who wrote the immortal lyric “A-mer-i-ca!/ Fuck yeah!”, was going to take his nieces and nephews to a restaurant in Denver, Colorado. Not just any restaurant, mind you — this one was unique. Parker had grown up going to this magical place in the ’70s and ’80s, and it held a very special place in his heart. So, knowing that these...

Chicago – Patrick McDonald of HollywoodChicago.com appears on “The Morning Mess” with Scott Thompson on Wbgr-fm on September 12th, reviewing the new documentary “¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!” In limited release on September 13th (see local listings).

Rating: 3.5/5.0

Trey Parker and Matt Stone of “South Park” and “The Book of Mormon” for some reason (mostly nostalgia) purchase the Denver-based Mexican themed restaurant Casa Bonita. But it’s not just any Mexican Restaurant, it’s a bizarre mishmash of tunnels, animatronic mascots, puppet shows, people in costumes running around and yes, cliff divers in a real waterfall pool, which is all available around and during the dining experience. When the reality of being restaurant owners sets into the wacky pair, an original six million dollar renovation budget starts to multiply into many times that sum.

”¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!” is in select theaters on September 13th, see local listings, and on Paramount+ later this fall.

In an alternate TV universe, Fox is the home of The Simpsons, Family Guy, South Park and a couple unsightly skid marks.

Long before Trey Parker and Matt Stone were the co-heads of a billion-dollar multimedia franchise and the co-owners of the almost-as-expensive Casa Bonita, the pair were the writers, producers, animators and stars of two of the earliest viral videos in comedy history. While attending the University of Colorado in 1992, the pair created an animated short film called The Spirit of Christmas featuring a group of schoolboys who bring Frosty the Snowman to life, only for the iconic animated character to turn homicidal.

Three years later, Fox executive Brian Graden would stumble upon the original The Spirit of Christmas video and commission the Colorado duo to create a second festive short film, this time featuring a bitter feud between Santa Claus and Jesus Christ. Upon the success of the second sketch,...

When I first moved to Denver, Colorado, I had heard stories about the Mexican restaurant Casa Bonita. Casa Bonita, an off-beat suburban restaurant that’s seen better days, was a staple of many Denverites’ childhoods. Memories filled with exploring vast indoor cave dwellings, watching cliff jumpers dive into a massive pool of water, random gorilla sightings, and a Disneyland-like atmosphere that welcomes guests with cafeteria-style Mexican food, Casa Bonita’s popularity was attributed to a wonderment that consumed all 52,000 square feet of the humongous eatery.

Time has not been kind to one of Colorado’s most visited attractions. The Covid-19 pandemic sent the owners of Casa Bonita into bankruptcy, and many Denver area residents feared the worst: their beloved establishment would close forever. It was looking like that would be the case despite protests and campaigns to save it, but then the most famous Colorado natives decided to live out their dreams.

South Park fans and multimillion dollar novelty eatery enthusiasts are no doubt eagerly awaiting ¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!, the new documentary chronicling Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s efforts to restore the beloved Colorado restaurant to its former glory.

Instead of being unceremoniously dumped onto streaming services like so many other documentaries these days, ¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor! is actually getting a theatrical release. In fact, it’s out right now — but only in one theater in Colorado.

While the movie is coming to select cities on September 13th, it opened this past weekend at the Alamo Drafthouse in Denver, which isn’t far from the actual Casa Bonita. The hometown release was a huge hit even before it began, with booming presales prompting the theater to adjust its screening schedule from two showings a day to “4-5 shows, possibly with more to be added.”

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice occupied the Alamo’s largest auditorium,...

“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” (Warner Bros.) pulled off a “Twisters”: Take a fondly regarded, pre-2000 smash that never had a sequel, tweak it enough while keeping its strongest elements intact, capitalize on premium formats, and open to terrific results.

Tim Burton’s film did $110 million, almost $30 million better than “Twisters” on its July release date and in a more crowded field. If Sunday estimates hold, it will represent close to 75 percent of all business in U.S./Canada theaters.

The weekend after Labor Day can be one of the year’s worst, but studios began shifting that narrative back in 2017 when Warner Bros. released “It” to $123 million. Other studios avoided the date against a blockbuster, but they also had to contend with the NFL’s early-season games as well as some key competitions in college football.

“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” benefited from demographics less devoted to football: It skewed female (Thursday previews were...

Documentary ¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor! with Trey Parker and Matt Stone cleaned up on one screen only in Denver and Tamil-language revenge thriller The Greatest Of All Time is the latest Indian film to pop at the North American box office with over $2 million on 530 screens for the three-day weekend and a cume of $3.5 million including previews, according to Comscore, as it sets records at home.

The Alamo Denver had Beetlejuice Beetlejuice in its biggest auditoriums with Casa Bonita showing at one 115-seater and sold out all weekend except for a a dozen or so tickets over Saturday and Sunday morning shows – meaning its $21.75k gross is about the top of what’s possible. The best per screen average for a doc post-Covid is Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s Wild Life in 2023 at over $23k each on two screens.

Casa Bonita’s afternoon and evening showings were...

After releasing what could be the song of the summer with “Not Like Us,” Kendrick Lamar had another big surprise for his fans as the NFL season kicks off: he’s doing the Super Bowl halftime show.

The rapper made the announcement with a video on his YouTube channel in which he launches footballs from a passing machine while in front of the American flag.

Kendrick Lamar

Super Bowl Halftime Show

New Orleans pic.twitter.com/yN8DJausxh

— Complex Music (@ComplexMusic) September 8, 2024

After several years largely out of the spotlight, Lamar exploded back into the pop culture consciousness with his much-publicized rap battle with Drake. It’s a battle he won decisively when “Not Like Us” — a dance track that questions Drake’s authenticity as an artist and calls him a “certified pedophile” — blasted to the top of the charts.

Lamar followed that up with an acclaimed Juneteenth concert at...

We know for a fact that Trey Parker and Matt Stone couldn’t have stuffed South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut with more profanity if they tried — because they did.

When Parker, Stone and Paramount Pictures first submitted the 1999 film to the MPAA for evaluation, the dubiously diligent censors sent back the film with a dreaded, unmarketable Nc-17 rating due to excessive profanity. The South Park team then re-edited the franchise’s first feature length film to make it more palatable to the movie business’ most venal finger-waggers, only to get another Nc-17 result. Then, Parker and Stone made even more cuts to the cuss words. Another Nc-17.

Eventually, the South Park duo got fed up with the back-and-forth and asked the MPAA to tell them exactly what prevented South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut from getting a passable R-rating, and the agency noted that the most recent cut of...

Matt Stone and Trey Parker have never been scared of controversy. However, they showed they are unwilling to take on the upcoming controversies this year. As a result, the duo chose to delay the next season until 2025. The creators don’t want to deal with the real-world headaches of 2024.

Here is why Matt and Trey chose to push off South Park until 2025.

South Park Won’t Be Back Until 2025

Any fan who hoped to see a new season of South Park in 2024 will be disappointed. Many fans wanted to see Matt Stone and Trey Parker deliver their scathing criticism of the upcoming presidential election, but the creators want nothing to do with it.

Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny of ‘South Park’

While there will be plenty of chances to spoof the upcoming presidential election, Matt and Trey are tapping out. This is unusual for them since they usually attack all real-world issues with no abandon.

For almost 30 years, “South Park” creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker have skewered everything, from pop culture to politics, with their trademark obscene sense of humor, but after multiple seasons of covering the Trump presidency, as well as its fallout, it seems they’re finally ready for a break from the current climate.

While promoting their upcoming documentary, “¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!,” Stone and Parker spoke with Vanity Fair for a recent interview, in which they explained their reasoning for skipping election commentary in their upcoming season and why they’ve delayed production.

“We’ve tried to do ‘South Park’ through four or five presidential elections, and it is such a hard thing,” Stone said. “It’s such a mind scramble, and it seems like it takes outsized importance.”

Adding to these sentiments, Parker said, “Obviously, it’s fucking important, but it kind of takes over everything and we just have less fun.

Way back in 2003, Trey Parker and Matt Stone released an episode of “South Park” that revolved around one of their beloved childhood memories, a Mexican restaurant called Casa Bonita. The episode culminates in Cartman running through Casa Bonita, escaping the cops long enough to see all the sights and experience the restaurant in its entirety. When the cops and parents finally catch up to him, they ask him if it was worth it, and he says, “Totally.” It’s clear the real Casa Bonita is a place filled with fond memories for Parker and Stone.

Continue reading ‘Casa Bonita Mi Amor’ Review: Trey Parker & Matt Stone Save A Piece Of Their Childhood In This Sweet Doc at The Playlist.

The animated action series South Park has long been infamous for giving some of the most bizarre episodes of all time, pulling off parody stuff that would seem a bit too risky to most others. In fact, through one episode, the animated series seems to have allegedly made enemies with none other than the king of action and one of the greatest stars of all time, Tom Cruise.

South Park. | Credits: Comedy Central.

This happened in an episode that featured the Church of Scientology, the religion that the renowned Mission: Impossible alum follows, and their alleged practices in the eyes of the people who wrote the script. However, this episode was so bursting with criticism and mocking reactions to the actor and his religion that the episode was reportedly forced to hide all names in the credits!

This South Park Episode Allegedly Picked Beef With Tom Cruise

Back in 2005, episode...