Matt Stone net worth
Number of divisions: 17
What is Matt Stone’s net worth?
Matt Stone is an American actor, writer, producer and animator. Matt Stone’s net worth is 700 million U.S. dollars. Stone co-created the successful comedy central series “South Park” in 1997 with his college friend and classmate Trey Parker.
The two have also collaborated in the movies “Cannibals! Musical” (1993), “Orgazmo” (1997), “Baseball” (1998), “South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut” ( 1999) and “Team America: World Police” (2004), the 2001 Comedy Central series “That’s my Bush!” and the 2020 web series “Barbaric Justice”.
Matt and Trey co-created the smash hit Broadway musical “The Book of Mormon”, which won nine Tony Awards in 2011 and earned more than $500 million in revenue from tickets and merchandise.
Stone has voiced many roles in “South Park”, including Kyle Broflowski, Kenny McCormick, and Butters Storch, and he is also in “Team America: World Police.” Voice over multiple characters in the movie. He also played James Humphrey in “Cannibals! The Musical”, Dave the lighter in “Orgazmo”, and Doug Reimer in “Baseball”, and appeared in the movie “Running!” Run!” China. (2002) and “Electric Apricot: Pursuing Festeroo” (2007). Matt has served as a producer on many Parker-Stone projects as well as the Canadian TV series “Kenny and Spinney” (2007-2008) and MTV’s “How’s Your News?” (2009).
early life
Matt Stone was born Matthew Richard Stone on May 26, 1971 in Houston, Texas. He grew up in Littleton, Colorado, and grew up with his mother Sheila, father Gerrard (professor of economics), and sister Rachel. Sheila and Gerrard later became the names of Kyle Brovlovsky’s parents in “South Park.” Matt attended a traditional high school, and after graduation, he attended the University of Colorado at Boulder. He majored in mathematics and film, and received a bachelor of arts degree in 1993. After meeting Trey Parker in film class, the two began to produce short films together, including “The Martian” and “The First Date.”
Profession
In 1992, Matt and Trey and Jason McHugh and Ian Hardin founded the Revenge Conscience Production Company. They used architectural paper-cuts to make the short film “Jesus and Frost”. This short film is also known as the “Christmas Spirit” and their 1995 short film “Jesus and Santa The boys of Cormick and Eric Cartman made their debut. Parker, Stone, McHugh, and Hardin produced a trailer for “Alferd Packer: The Musical”, which is a movie about “The Colorado Cannibal”, which is very popular among students at the University of Colorado at Boulder. So much so that the chair of the school’s film department persuaded them to expand it into a real film. Matt participated in the work of the film as a writer, actor and producer. It was renamed “Cannibal! Musical” after it was sold to Troma Entertainment in 1996. This movie has become a fanatical phenomenon, and the live stage version has been performed by many troupes.
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Parker and Stone moved to Hollywood and struggled for the next few years, even though they had an agent, lawyer, and script agreement. Matt and director Trey wrote and produced “Orgazmo”. After its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in 1997, the October film company bought the rights for $1 million. Producer Brian Graden (Brian Graden) after watching “Jesus and Frost”, asked the two to make a video card to give to his friend; the result was “Jesus and Santa”, comedy center executive officer Doug Herzog liked it very much and he asked them to develop it into a series. Parker and Stone produced the pilot show for $300,000, and Comedy Central’s show marketing earned the network approximately $30 million in T-shirt sales before the show was broadcast. At the time of writing, “South Park” has aired more than 300 episodes in 23 seasons, and gave birth to the movie “South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut” (box office revenue of $83.1 million), album ” Chef Aid: The South Park Album” (1998) and “Mr. Hankey’s Christmas Classic” (1999), as well as several video games such as “South Park: The Stick of Truth” (2014) and “South Park: Broken But complete” (2017)).
In 2002, Matt and Trey began to produce the R-rated puppet movie “Team America: World Police”, which they co-wrote and co-produce. Stone said of the experience: “That was the worst moment of my life-I never want to see the puppets anymore.” During the production of “Team America”, the two began to work with the writer and composer. Robert Lopez co-created “The Book of Mormon”, and Robert Lopez co-created “Q Avenue”. The musical premiered on Broadway on March 24, 2011, with Andrew Ranneles and Josh Gade starring as Elder Price and Elder Cunningham, respectively. “The Book of Mormon” received 14 Tony nominations, more than any other Broadway series won that year, and won 9 of them. In 2013, Parker and Stone announced that they would set up a production studio called Important Studio. They said: “Over the years of working with several different studios, we began to realize that our favorite person in the world is us. Themselves.” During the Covid-19 pandemic, Matt and Trey released two “South Park” specials, the 2020 “Pandemic Special” and the 2021 “South Park Vaccination Special”, and Co-authored the Deepfake technology network series “Sassy Justice”. Stone said of the web series: “Before the terrible event of the coronavirus, everyone was very afraid of deep forgery. We just wanted to make fun of it because it made it less terrible.”
Digital contract
As early as 2007, Matt and Trey’s Comedy Center contract was about to be renewed. When the ink dried up, the two reached a new deal that was considered unprecedented in Hollywood. The deal allows them to create a digital hub for all content related to South Park, including streaming episodes. Most importantly, it allows them to take 50% of all advertising revenue generated by programs, digital or radio. Because of this unheard of contract, Parker and Stone can earn approximately US$25-30 million per year from the show on Comedy Central alone. Whenever the show is sold in a joint form, they will also get a 50% discount. For example, Hulu paid US$198 million in streaming media rights in 2015, or South Park’s streaming media rights were put on the market at a price of US$500 million in 2019. . Each transaction earns a 50% commission for the two (25% per transaction).
Extremely valuable contract terms
How did they reach such a sweet deal? This all stems from a loophole in their first Comedy Central contract since 1997. At the time, no one could have imagined that digital rights to property would become valuable. Well, no one except Matt, Trey and a very visionary lawyer. The lawyer added a clause to the original contract stating that the creator will receive 50% of any income generated except for the TV broadcast of the actual program. For about two decades, the clause was basically worthless. With the advent of YouTube and other video streaming platforms, all this has changed.
Viacom briefly tried to defend the clause, but in the end, Parker and Stone not only received 50% of the non-broadcast revenue share, but also had the right to distribute the program digitally if they deemed it appropriate. Once They saw their programs being pirated constantly on YouTube. Matt and Trey thought it was meaningless to fight piracy, so they put every episode on the Internet for free, earning hundreds from digital advertising revenue. Ten thousand U.S. dollars. With the advent of streaming services like Hulu, they really started to make money. When Hulu paid $192 million for the 4-year copyright of the post catalog, Matt and Trey each earned about $50 million. At the time, this was the largest streaming media transaction in history. When the deal was concluded in 2019, HBO Max obtained the exclusive streaming rights, and the deal was rumored to be worth 500 million to 550 million U.S. dollars.
(Photo by Larry Busaca/Getty Images for Hulu)
commodity
Viacom/Comedy Central is wiser in terms of commodity rights. From the very beginning of the show, Viacom has the largest share of merchandise rights, reportedly as high as 90%. This may have been renegotiated in the recent contract, but the current terms have not been discussed publicly.
Viacom/CBS transaction in 2021
On August 5, 2021, it was revealed that Matt and Trey and Viacom CBS signed a new six-year contract worth 900 million U.S. dollars. According to the agreement, Matt and Trey will produce six seasons and 14 films of the show, which will be exclusively available for streaming service Paramount+.
personal life
Matt met Angela Howard, the executive officer of Comedy Center, in 2001, and they got married in 2008. The couple have two children. Parker and Stone often make fun of religion in their works, while Matt is “self-proclaimed atheist.”
Awards and nominations
Stone was nominated for 18 Primetime Emmy Awards for “South Park”, Outstanding Animation Program (less than one hour of programming) in 2005, 2007 and 2009, and Outstanding Animation Program (one hour or more of programming) in 2008 , And an outstanding 2013 animation program. “South Park” also won Matt the CableACE Award for an animated program special or series and the PGA Award for the Most Promising TV Producer. “The Book of Mormon” has won nine Tony Awards, including best musical, best musical and best original music. The musical also won the Grammy Award for Best Musical Album, as well as the Drama Channel Award and the External Critics Association Award.
Stone won the NAVGTR Comedy Writing Award for the video game “South Park: The Stick of Truth”, and won the MTV Movie Best Music Performance Award for “South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut”, and Los Angeles Film Critics At the 2003 Santa Monica Film Festival, Matt and Trey won the Association’s Best Animation Award for “The Spirit of Christmas”, and Matt and Trey won the Maverick Filmmaker Award. Stone also won the Anne Award (“South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut” animated feature film creation outstanding personal achievement award), voice actor award (best video game male voice performance award) nominations. The role of “South Park: The Stick of Truth”), Gemini Award (the best comedy show or series of “Kenny vs Spinney”), and the Online Film and Television Association (Best Voice Acting and Best Voice Acting)” “South Park” animation program).
real estate
In 2005, Matt spent $3.5 million to purchase a 3,000-square-foot house in Venice, California. He listed the house for sale for USD 4.5 million in January 2020. He owns a smaller property nearby, which he bought in 2003 for $800,000. In 2008, he bought an entire floor of a building in New York City for US$5.15 million and sold the property for US$6.15 million in April 2019.
