Lawsuit over $500 million South Park deal

South Park has a long history of offending people on screen, but this time the drama is all off-screen.

The gloves are off. Picture: Paramount

The South Park folks have made enemies over the years. They’ve never been reticent to indiscriminately stick the boot into the rich, famous and powerful.

In animated form, Justin Bieber is squished to death between the fingers of a mythical monster, the Kardashians are murdered by crazed fans, and Bono is revealed to be literal poo.

Even child murder victim JonBenet Ramsey is apparently Satan’s confidante in the underworld.

Creators Trey Stone and Matt Parker recently appeared on the Basic podcast and said they have been sued or had the threat of lawsuits over them so many times, they “can’t even remember”.

Especially when they’ve written episodes with the intention of poking the bear, as they said they did of 2005 episode featuring fictionalised versions of Tom Cruise and Scientology. That really is just asking for it.

So, it’s almost anti-climactic that South Park is now at the centre of a massive lawsuit involving a $US500 million deal but it has nothing to do with offending people onscreen.

The offending and hurt feelings are all off-screen.

Warner Bros is suing Paramount over its $500 million South Park deal.

The lawsuit was filed by Warner Bros, the parent company of TV network and streaming platform HBO, and Paramount, the media conglomerate which owns the rights to South Park.

Warner Bros alleged that Paramount has not fulfilled the terms of a 2019 licensing deal worth $US500 million, according to Variety.

Under the terms of the deal, according to Warner Bros’ filing, Paramount licensed three seasons of 10 episodes each to Warner Bros’ streaming platform HBO Max. But instead of 30 episodes, Warner Bros has had one season of one episode, a second season of six episodes and an understanding the third will contain six episodes.

The total of 14 episodes is fewer than half of what was agreed, according to the lawsuit. The deal also included the library of existing South Park episodes but Warner Bros argued new episodes were much more valuable than the archive.

But what seems to really be sticking in Warner Bros’ craw is that while it was being underserved, Paramount has been releasing new South Park content on its own streaming platform, Paramount+, but under the guise of different branding.

In 2021, Paramount subsidiary MTV signed a $US900 million deal with Stone and Parker for South Park work that would be exclusive to Paramount+.

A South Park special that was classified as a ‘movie’ and not included in the Warner Bros deal.

That 2021 deal would include 14 streaming movies, four of which have already premiered on Paramount+.

Warner Bros contends that the Paramount+ South Park movies diverted resources away from regular episodes, and that its rival studio engaged in “verbal trickery” and “grammatical sleight-of-hand” to characterise the content as movies, films or events instead of episodes.

Warner Bros’ aggressive action comes amid the backdrop of the increasingly intense streaming wars, and in a softening market, every advantage could make or break a platform.

Paramount has denied Warner Bros’ claims and accused Warner Bros of failing to pay fees it owes under the agreement.

South Park has been running since 1997 and is in its 26th season.