Throughout its 26-year run, the team behind South Park have made several powerful enemies thanks to their biting satirical humour – ranging from pretty much every high-profile celebrity you could ever name, politicians, certain members of the royal family, to the Church of Scientology – but who knew the hit animated series’ biggest lawsuit to date would involve something as comparatively banal as a licensing deal?
The lawsuit in question was recently filed by Warner Bros Discovery (parent company of HBO Max) against Paramount Global, South Park Digital Studios (owned by series creators Trey Parker & Matt Stone), and Paramount subsidiary MTV Entertainment Studios at the New York State Supreme Court, alleging a breach in the rival entertainment companies’ half-billion-dollar exclusivity contract. Now, they’re demanding US$200 million (AU$297.5 million) in damages.
Essentially, back in 2019, Warner Bros paid an eye-watering US$1,687,500 (AU$2,510,360) per episode fee to both Paramount and South Park Digital Studios in exchange for exclusive streaming rights to their entire back catalogue and another 30 brand new episodes to be delivered across three seasons. Not a bad way to secure “anchor” content for its then-nascent platform HBO Max.
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Fast forward to 2021, Paramount+ is launched, and the company decides it needs a leg-up on the competition with something besides Taylor Sheridan’s Yellowstone cinematic universe. As some of you may recall, this resulted in a billion-dollar deal between MTV Entertainment Studios and Trey Parker & Matt Stone, the latter of whom would now be on the hook to produce another six seasons as well as 14 specials movies “events” exclusively available on Paramount+.
This move has been deemed a “grammatical sleight-of-hand” by Warner Bros. Paramount and South Park Digital Studios would’ve been forced to surrender any specials to HBO Max first, just like they did with the Pandemic and Vaccination releases; plus Warner Bros still had the power to veto future South Park movies after co-producing 1999’s Bigger, Longer, & Uncut. Hence “events.”
Furthermore, the lawsuit alleges that South Park Digital Studios has – as the AVClub describes – “retroactively declared” the aforementioned Pandemic and Vaccination specials completely fulfilled their requirements for the promised season 24, in addition to shifting the goal posts for season 25 and season 26 with a reduced episode count, while citing COVID-related production issues/delays which the “events” seem to be immune from.
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“We believe that Paramount and South Park Digital Studios embarked on a multi-year scheme of unfair trade practices and deception, flagrantly, and repeatedly breaching our contract, which clearly gave HBO Max exclusive streaming rights to the existing library and new content from the popular animated comedy South Park,” HBO Max expressed via statement.
Paramount, on the other hand, has dismissed all of the above.
“We believe these claims are without merit and look forward to demonstrating so through the legal process,” a spokesperson for the company told Deadline.
“We also note that Paramount continues to adhere to the parties’ contract by delivering new South Park episodes to HBO Max, despite the fact that Warner Bros Discovery has failed and refused to pay license fees that it owes to Paramount for episodes that have already been delivered, and which HBO Max continues to stream.”
In short, this may get very ugly. But that’s the price you pay when you have a lack of ‘tegridy.
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