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South Park’s streaming rights are at the center of a massive lawsuit between two services, HBO Max and Paramount+.
Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of HBO Max, sued Paramount Global — which owns both Paramount+ and Comedy Central, South Park’s longtime television house — on Friday in a New York Supreme Court, arguing in the lawsuit that the longtime Animated series breached the $500 million deal that gave HBO Max exclusive streaming rights to South Park.
The deal, struck in 2019, would see South Park’s entire catalog – then spanning 23 seasons and 300 episodes – stream exclusively on the then-new HBO Max service, which would also receive exclusive rights to the next three seasons of South Park would.
However, the Covid-19 pandemic halted production of the television series, resulting in a heavily shortened (two episodes of the usual 10) season 24. A similarly shortened season 25 (six episodes) followed in 2022 with season 26 (reportedly six episodes), now airing on Comedy Central/HBO Max.
Since new episodes are more desirable and profitable for HBO Max than the older ones, the streaming service believes they overpaid for the exclusive rights in the 2019 deal, reports Variety.
South Park’s truncated new seasons are just one of the lawsuits in Warner Bros. Discovery’s lawsuit against Paramount Global. The other big issue is the fact that South Park also signed a $900 million deal with Paramount for over a dozen South Park “specials,” four of which have already premiered on Paramount+.
Warner Bros. Discovery accuses the Paramount/South Park deal of using “verbal trickery” and “grammatical sleight of hand” to sell this cartoon content as “specials” — and thus property of Paramount+ — rather than “episodes.” ‘ to feature what this would make them exclusive to HBO Max.
Paramount Global denied the allegations in a statement to Variety. “We believe these allegations are unfounded and look forward to proving this through the trial,” said a spokesman for Paramount Global. “We also note that Paramount continues to honor the parties’ agreement by supplying new South Park episodes to HBO Max, despite Warner Bros. Discovery’s failure and refusal to pay royalties that Paramount received for those already released Episodes owed have shipped and HBO Max continues to stream.”
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South Park founders Trey Parker and Matt Stone were not named as defendants, but Stone was quoted in the lawsuit as saying, “We’ve got money for you now,” following the Paramount+ deal.
Ironically, given the new lawsuit, the latest Paramount+ specials were titled South Park: The Streaming Wars.