Paramount Countersues WB Discovery Over “South Park”

Paramount has counter-sued for $50 million to WB Discovery’s recent $200 million suit due to unpaid royalties for the rights to stream South Park new episodes the day after they premiere on Comedy Central. Turns out, WB Discovery has had NO royalties paid since getting the exclusive rights sometime ago.

In early October 2019, industry rumors suggested that the streaming rights for South Park were being offered to various services, creating an intense bidding war that was estimated to be as high as US$500 million. HBO and South Park Digital Studios announced that HBO had secured a multi-year deal for the exclusive streaming rights for South Park on their HBO Max service starting June 24, 2020. While the terms of the deal were not disclosed, Variety reported the deal fell between US$500 million and US$550 million. Beginning with season 25 in 2022, HBO Max posts new episodes next day after their Comedy Central airing. Once that deal expires in 2025, Paramount+ will become the exclusive streaming home. In addition, the season 27 episodes in 2024 would stream first on Paramount+ before hitting HBO Max.

Paramount claims that WB Discovery hasn’t even made any of the payments on the aforementioned amount to which WBD retorts being left out on the “made for TV” movies and the fact that the first ten seasons of South Park were still made available on AVOD services like Pluto, loopholes for the exclusivity of the series being on a SVOD. It should be noted, new episodes of South Park do NOT stream on any premium services except HBO MAX, with the latest season 26 from Comedy Central being available to stream on Comedy Central’s website which is technically streaming on demand and requires a cable login to access making them exclusively available on HBO MAX. It should also be noted that HBO MAX has removed select episodes of South Park from its streamers for more political reasons.

Starting in May, HBO MAX is changing its name to MAX.

Our Take

WB Discovery should concentrate its efforts on bringing back Justin Roiland to Rick and Morty and less on this suit that will probably just be awarded as a split thereby reverting the rights to Paramount which would continue the exodus of animated content being made available on MAX anyway.