Warner Bros. Discovery has taken Paramount Global to court over the streaming rights for animated sitcom “South Park.”
According to a lawsuit filed on Friday, WBD claims Paramount breached the $500 million deal WBD made with South Park Digital Studios (SPDS) in 2019 for exclusive domestic streaming rights to the show. Specifically, WBD said Paramount released new “South Park” specials on Paramount+ – content that should have gone to HBO Max.
WBD in 2019 won a bid for 333 total “South Park” episodes, including all episodes from seasons 1-24 and 10 new episodes each for seasons 24 through 26, which had yet to premiere. The deal was meant to last through June 2025.
But in 2021, Paramount subsidiary MTV Studios inked a $900 million deal with South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. The agreement, which is set to last through 2027, included 14 “South Park” made-for-streaming movies that would exclusively air on Paramount+.
WBD in the lawsuit noted new “South Park” episodes “have consistently been among the top performers” on HBO Max since the platform’s launch in 2020. Additionally, the company said it continues to incur damages in excess of $200 million, “as a result of Defendants’ misconduct.”
“SPDS, acting in concert with Paramount and MTV, engaged in a campaign of verbal trickery designed to circumvent the terms of the 2019 Agreement,” wrote WBD. “To accomplish this, Defendants used grammatical sleight-of-hand, characterizing new content as ‘movies,’ ‘films,’ or ‘events’ to side-step SPDS’s contractual obligations.”
WBD said that referring to the content as “movies” was an attempt to distinguish the titles from the two 50-minute-long “Pandemic Specials,” which aired in 2020 and 2021, respectively, and are covered under the WBD agreement.
Further, WBD said SPDS under-delivered on its contract by providing fewer than 10 episodes each for seasons 24 and 25 of “South Park,” and season 26 is expected to contain a similar episode count.
Earlier this month, HBO Max began streaming next-day episodes of season 26. Prior to that, WBD stated SPDS “had not provided Warner/HBO with any new ‘South Park’ content since the final episode of season 25 premiered on March 17, 2022.”
For Paramount’s part, a company spokesperson told Deadline that WBD’s claims “are without merit and look forward to demonstrating so through the legal process,” adding WBD has “failed and refused to pay license fees that it owes to Paramount for episodes that have already been delivered” to HBO Max.
Last year, Paramount expressed plans to move the entire “South Park” library onto Paramount+ starting in 2025, for both U.S. and global subscribers.
WBD’s lawsuit comes shortly after the company reported it reached 96.1 million global subscribers in Q4. HBO Max notably returned as an add-on to Amazon Prime Video in December. Shortly thereafter, WBD raised the SVOD service’s monthly subscription by one dollar.