Here’s why Warner Bros. is suing the South Park guys and Paramount for $200 million
The lawsuit accuses Paramount and South Park Digital Studios of using "grammatical sleight-of-hand" to obscure HBO Max's exclusive streaming rights to the show
Aux News South Park
Warner Bros. Discovery has just hit its rivals over at Paramount with a $200 million lawsuit, alleging that the company has, basically, screwed them over for several years now in regards to streaming rights for Comedy Central’s South Park. And make no mistake about it: These people are pissed. We’ve never seen a corporate-penned lawsuit like this use big, angry chapter headings like THE ILLICIT CONSPIRACY EMERGES. (Actual quote.)
The core of the issue is a deal that Warner signed back in 2019 with South Park Digital Studios (SPDS), the company that makes the show, and which is co-owned by Paramount and series creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. (Who, due to some savvy deal-making back in the very early days of the internet, get fully half of whatever streaming revenue the series picks up, an arrangement that has made both men billionaires.) The deal saw Warner—desperate for “anchor” content for its then-new HBO Max streaming service—pay an exorbitant $1,687,500 per episode fee for exclusive streaming rights to the show’s back catalogue, and for 30 more episodes to be delivered in the form of three more seasons. (So, yes: The streaming rights for “Not Without My Anus” almost certainly cost more than your house.)
But a funny thing happened on the way to Season 24: Paramount ditched its flailing CBS All Access streaming service and rebranded its online efforts as Paramount+. And suddenly, the company was announcing that its “brand new” streaming service was going to have some “brand new” South Park content, too. Not new episodes, mind you—that would breach the HBO Max contract. And not “specials,” because then they’d have to offer them to HBO Max first, as they did with 2021's 50-minute “Pandemic Special” and “Vaccination Special.” For a minute, they tried calling them “movies,” but then Warner Bros. reminded Paramount that it co-produced the actual South Park movie, 1999's Bigger, Longer, And Uncut, and thus retained the rights to veto any future South Park films. So instead, they just gave up and called them “events.” (There have been four so far: 2021's Post-COVID and its sequel, and 2022's Streaming Wars Part 1 and Part 2, all exclusive to Paramount+.)
Meanwhile, per the lawsuit, HBO Max was also pissed to learn that SPDS was retroactively declaring that the two 2021 specials that had made their way to HBO Max after airing on Comedy Central “counted” as the entirety of the show’s 24th season, and that Season 25 of the series, which aired in 2022, was only going to be 6 episodes long. (The current Season 26, the last covered by the streaming deal, is also expected to be truncated.) SPDS reportedly claimed that production was delayed and shortened by COVID, but, as the lawsuit points out, that didn’t seem to stop the Paramount+ “events” from being cranked out.
Ultimately, it all comes back to money: Warner Bros. contends that it only paid that huge flat per-episode fee in the first place because it was assured it would come with a) 30 full new episodes of content delivered in a timely fashion, and b) exclusive streaming rights to the show, neither of which really seems to have happened. So they’re suing for breach of contract against Paramount, SPDS (including Parker and Stone) and MTV, alleging damages of $200 million.
116 Comments
I’m not a lawyer, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night and it seems like Warner has a good case.
Does it? Or are you part of THE ILLICIT COUNTER-CONSPIRACY?
How long until there’s a South Park episode with that exact title?
At the pace they work? Next week. Best part is it will be one of the episodes delivered to Warners.
I haven’t seen the contract so I have no idea if Paramount’s blatant, ostensibly clumsy attempts to find semantic loopholes when their direction changed will hold up, and statistically, you should always put your money on “they’ll settle out of court,” but the violation of the spirit of the agreement seems pretty cut and dried.
Yeah, this seems like a clear case of Paramount shopping the rights before consolidating their streaming services and now regretting that move and trying to get out of it.
good enough for me!
I have a GED in Law, and I agree 100%
They do seem to have a point, but at the same time, screw Warner.
I’m just a TV lawyer (in that I learned all about lawyering from TV shows), but I concur.
I concur with your concurrance.
Hard to say without seeing the actual contract that was signed. You should never make assumptions with this sorta thing. So if the contract says “three seasons and all specials” then they may be SOL. If the contract clearly states 3 seasons each of at least X number of episodes and all non-regular episode South Park content then they may have a case
Am I crazy or does this article explicitly say 30 new episodes delivered over 3 seasons?
The article says that is what they promised and the lawsuit implies that as well but I was just saying I am wondering what the contract actually says
Meanwhile, per the lawsuit, HBO Max was also pissed to learn that SPDS
was retroactively declaring that the two 2021 specials that had made
their way to HBO Max after airing on Comedy Central “counted” as the
entirety of the show’s 24th season, and that Season 25 of the series,
which aired in 2022, was only going to be 6 episodes long.Surely somebody at HBO thought to put what “season” means in the contract.If not, they need new lawyers.Unless HBO thought maybe they could use that as an escape clause.
Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause is on Disney+
Surely somebody at HBO thought to put what “season” means in the contract.
Depends on how you think this part reads
The lawsuit alleges that when HBO Max bid on the “South Park” streaming
rights, it did so with the assurance that there would be three new
seasons of 10 episodes each. The suit alleges, however, that only two
episodes were delivered for the first of those seasons and only six for
the second. HBO Max understands that the third season will also consist
of of six episodes — for a total of 14 across the three seasons.
Sounds like they were told there would be 10 episodes each season, for 3 seasons, but only got 14
Seasons aren’t what they used to be. It could mean practically anything in the 2020’s. Traditionally, a single season averaged anywhere from 27-35 episodes. Then in the mid-late 2000’s, they started averaging 15-20 and we also began seeing mid-season hiatus, splitting the season up 3 or 4 months apart.Now, a season could be 12 episodes. It could be 6. They might split 12 episodes into 2 seasons. It’s whatever network says it is. As long as there’s at least 2 or 3 episodes that are released in the same year, it technically counts as a season.I’m no big fan of WB or anything but seriously, fuck Paramount+. Who’s actually subbing to watch the Michael Bay Transformers collection and garbage Trek?
I get it through my Walmart+ sub.
“Seasons aren’t what they used to be.”
Sure, but there was “the assurance that there would be three new seasons of 10 episodes each”.
South Park never peaked more than 18 episodes in a seasons and with the last few pre-pandemic seasons being solidly only 10 episodes apiece.
Warner Bros was taken in by dishonest Hollywood accounting? Poor babies lol.
Doesn’t seem like much of a case. The Paramount stuff hasn’t aired on Comedy Central, it’s not part of the proper South Park show. As long as they are still producing mainline episodes and giving them to HBO, then what’s the issue? Also, the episodes are available on the South Park site itself without HBO.
Well, you can’t make that argument, because they retroactively decided that the specials would constitute a season of South Park that they were contractually obligated to give to HBO Max.I like Matt and Trey, but they’re double-dipping here. Who knows what the contract says exactly, but they’re being dicks about it.
Beyond the exclusivity claim, they supposedly promised HBO 30 new episodes over three seasons. They’ve delivered 8 episodes over two seasons so far, and look to deliver only 6 more, so less than half of what they promised. They blame COVID for shortening those two seasons, but they were still able to produce four “events” for P+ in that timeframe, with names like “Post-COVID” and “The Streaming Wars” that seem like they’re bragging about getting away with breaking their contract.Not sure what’s hard to understand there. You intentionally underdeliver for someone you contracted with, while working for a direct competitor, you’re gonna get sued, whether you’re Mark Zuckerberg or Stone and Parker.
“As long as they are still producing mainline episodes and giving them to HBO, then what’s the issue?”
THEY’RE. NOT. THAT IS THE ISSUE.
Jesus, try to be even stupider next time.
Just more evidence that Matt & Trey are capitalist shitbirds. Funny, smart capitalist shitbirds! But.
Yes, surely these two dudes love Paramount+ and give so much of a fuck where their shows streams as long as they get their money that they did these things.
Im sure they love Paramount……The same company who forced them to make Basketball a movie that they constantly talk about how much they loathe it and, how they absolutely hated making it.
Funny, smartEhhhhhhhhhh
What?
They made a deal for a fuckton of money and are now being squirrelly about the deal. That’s capitalism, baby! And they’re very public libertarians. The ideal of “Fuck you, I got mine.”
You know who else is a capitalist shitbird? You.
Well yeah that’s the one thing the public really knows about them, they were Libertarians.
This is absolutely going to end up an episode.
I’d say this is a new “Cartoon Wars,” but Paramount and Warner/HBO refuse to air those episodes, so they can both get fucked.
“The answer, kids, is violence!”
First rule of lawyering is define your terms.
I just like that it’s been 25 years and every entertainment headline is still referring to Trey Parker and Matt Stone as “the South Park guys” as though they’re a couple of plucky young unknowns who are just getting started in this crazy business.
I got the impression one quit and the one whose been doing most of the writing for years is soloing it now?
Matt Stone is still in the writer’s room as far as I know. Trey Parker was always the one writing the final version of the script.
what was with the credits to the premier? One was credited as “assistant to..” the other for the first time.I’ve seen Six Days to Air (I’m just horrible with names) and back then it seemed like the main guy was doing 90% of the work and the other guy would chip in with joke ideas.
The writer’s room is bigger than back then from what I heard. They bring in comedians like Bill Hader to help out and go on field trips to break stories. Apparently they came up with the idea for Fishsticks on one of those.
No idea about the change in credits, though. Your guess is as good as mine.
Hader is actually there in Six Days to Air!
Hah! I hadn’t even noticed!
I’m pretty sure someone on staff genuinely said “don’t forget to bring a towel!” on a trip to a lake, which led to the creation of Towlie.
In the context of the episode’s closing minutes it makes perfect sense when you know that Matt Stone is Jewish.
One of the best gags in the episode, that was.
And yeah I believe Trey Parker’s generally been the one who does the lion’s share of the creative work on the show re: the scripts, at least. That’s not new.
My bad, I actually haven’t seen it. I’m working through a re-watch as my “before bed comedy” and figured I’d just wait. I just saw a headline about the implications of the credits and wondered if Stone had stopped clocking in.
The first episode back was about Jewish conspiracies, and the final credits are a joke because Matt Stone is Jewish.
Trey writes the final scripts and directs….Matt Stone is more of a producer/writing partner/scene partner/friend.
For more insight…check out Terrance and Phillip episodes. They’re meta as fuck.
They were making fun of how “Jews run Hollywood” the entire episode that they altered the executive credits at the end of that episode where it implies that Matt Stone took helm of the show, due to him being Jewish.In terms of the writing, it’s not just Trey who writes, they do have others who write for the show. I mean I don’t know the case for recent episodes but for the writing there are contributing factors from each of their writers. In fact, Bill Hader (who I think was still on SNL at the time) came to work for the show for a while as a writer (and sometimes as a voice actor), and is even known for his heavy contribution to the Fishsticks episode.
what was with the credits to the premier? One was credited as “assistant to..” the other for the first time.
Matt Stone’s Jewish and the episode was about how Jewish people don’t run Hollywood but, after an impassioned speech about how Jewish people don’t run Hollywood, people decided to give Kyle control over all of Hollywood.And then Matt Stone, the Jewish man who voices Kyle, was given all of the credit for South Park in the credits as a meta-joke.
What’s funny, is that “Cupid Ye”, the season premiere episode, was written and directed by Matt Stone, as opposed to just about literally every episode going back to the beginning being written and directed by Trey Parker.
Have they done anything else?
They did the Book of Mormon, an enormously popular Broadway musical
They’ve made BASEketball, Team America, and a Mormon musical of some sort. I think there might be more, but I dunno.
Parker & Stone (and Robert Lopez of “Avenue Q” ) created the “The Book of Mormon”, a very successful Broadway musical (a comedy about American Mormon missionaries to Africa and how they generally have no real idea of the actual problems people outside the first world face).
My wife insisted on dragging me to a musical, which I ordinarily wouldn’t be caught dead at. “You’ll love it, it was done by those South guys!” she said. I had no idea what the hell she was on about (I seldom do) but when I saw the handbill for the show, “Book Of Mormon” as we sat down, I thought “ok….”It was legitimately one of the funniest thing I had ever seen. Bowser & Blue’s “Hey Santa” being a close second.
Cannibal: The MusicalOrgazmoBASEketballThat’s My BushPrincessThe Book of Mormon
I didn’t know they were behind Orgazmo.
Trey Parker was literally the lead actor in the film, that’s a bit of a giveaway.
Let’s not forget Sassy Justice.
Yeah, because it’s not like they made a hugely successful musical and multiple non-South Park movies or anything. Super smart comment which definitely doesnt make you sound like a clueless dipshit. Bonus points for being smarmy while also being completely wrong and clueless.
Fuck yeah they have
The Book of Mormon ring any bells? They also bought & refurbished Casa Bonita and previously made the movies “Cannibal the musical”, Orgazmo, and BASEketball.
Well, sure. Most notably Team America: World Police and Book of Mormon, which at the time was the buzziest Broadway musical to come along in quite a while (before Hamilton became an even bigger, massive hit).
I’m sorry I made this “joke.”
Nah, not much, besides 3 or so movies that aren’t SP related and a Tony winning musical.
A cult classic movie: Team America: World PoliceAnother cult classic movie: BaseketballAn Oscar-winning movie: The South Park MovieA Tony-winning stage play: Book Of Mormon
I can only speak for myself, but I’ve been calling them “the Cannibal: The Musical duo.”
Shpadoinkle!
I call them “Those young chaps from BASEketball”
This is the correct nomenclature. Very shpadoinkle of you.
Howdy!
Howdy doody.
I mean, Baseketball and That’s My Bush! didn’t exactly set the world ablaze.
“still referring to Trey Parker and Matt Stone as “the South Park guys” as though they’re a couple of plucky young unknowns who are just getting started in this crazy business.”
What would suggest they be referred to as?
Not that I disagree with it, but that complaint is kind of funny to read. Having to explain the popularity of South Park, the liberal use of italics for emphasis, quoting Matt Stone as saying “we have fuck you money now”.
Kinda fun to see someone with Fuck You Money actually saying “fuck you.” Over $200 million.
insanely smart deal on matt and trey’s part. good for them. sounds like they can just…pay them 200 million and walk away? objectively the funniest move?
Was thinking the same… if you have two billionaires who really don’t give a shit what people think about them anyway then pay the $200 million in nickels covered in lube and delivered via those giant quarry dump trucks.
I’m not sure you understand the words “objectively” or “funny”.
This is gonna be great subject matter for next week’s South Park episode.
lmao! The more I see these streaming deals, the more I think about when Cable channels were screwing over their actors for Residuals.
All credit to Trey and Matt. Bless their genius-two of the 21st century’s greatest artists. Never better. And astonishly still fresh and vital. I’ll bet you anything when they pass, the fortune will go somewhere worthy.
Yet how far must we scroll to see people saying all billionaires are evil? And when asked to clarify, folks respond “yup, all”. Honestly people need to get perspective. This whole “all/not all” way of talking about living human beings is idiotic. Shit you could almost make a movie about it.
This comment is better satire than South Park has managed in at least 15 years.
Huh. Let’s not tell them that you can also watch the show for free on the South Park website.
As a high schooler without cable, South Park Studios was a godsend
HBO Max is a failed streaming platform so out come the lawyers to recoup sunk cost….
Man those fuckers are billionaires?? Good for them I guess.
Yeah, all thanks to some agent/manager/lawyer tossing in a little clause back in 1997 saying that they get half of all revenue generated by the show outside of the television broadcast, which was basically worthless then and also for the next 20 years, but then it made them billionaires.
The $200 million from Book of Mormon helped.
I’m betting that even in 1997 Parker and Stone had a pretty good idea that they would eventually be making money over the Internet. Online bootlegs of Santa vs. Jesus were an early viral phenomenon, and probably played a huge role in Comedy Central greenlighting South Park in the first place.
They’re smart guys, but not so prescient as to foresee the concept of digital rights when they were total nobodies and Comedy Central was a nothing channel. They figured they’d be canceled and flushed out of LA in a year, weren’t thinking the show would be a crazy hit that goes on for decades and how they’ll get paid when streaming TV on the internet becomes a gold mine. In 2007, after other people had made all of these successful sites streaming South Park illegally, they saw the existing audience online and figured that they’d put the show online themselves and take what money they could get out of it, rather than devoting millions upon millions of dollars on lawyers to lose playing wack-a-mole with them, but that’s not so crazy.
Which is exactly why you throw stuff like that in a contract. The other side may see it as a free giveaway, and you never know.
Well said. You don’t need to be prescient enough to know exactly what form the future revenue stream will take. You just need to be prescient enough not to accidentally give away any rights. And I think Stone and Parker’s early experience with digital piracy (apparently, the videos were so popular that someone at EA snuck a copy onto a printing of Tiger Woods golf for PS1) that it might’ve cued their lawyer to keeping the language as tight as possible.
I can also say that video on demand, eventually to become streaming, was very much a target business as early as the early 2000s. It never really got off the ground outside of hotel movie rentals in that incarnation, but having the foresight to retain those kinds of rights wasn’t as far out of left field as it might have seemed.
If they are billionaires, that means 90% of the G/O commenters need to hate them now. Womp womp.
I bet that Instagram loving bitch wife is behind this lawsuit somehow.
‘member when this show was good?
Around 2008 is where I peg the downfall. Not coincidentally the same season Bill Hader joined as a writer. That season had the stupid peruvian flute band episode and the one about High School Musical. But the next season is where it really became unwatchable with the painfully unfunny “Coon” episode and the stupid “Margaritaville” one. They just clearly stopped caring and ran out of ideas after that.
The Margaritaville episode won an Emmy.
Case in point: establishment awards ceremonies only ever recognize good things long past their prime.Am I to believe that AC/DC’s best song was released in 2010 because that’s when they finally won a Grammy? I guess that must be better than Back in Black…
That Peruvian flute band episode was soooo bad I was convinced it was self parody and there’d be some big reveal. But nope.
woah, woah…..I agree that for the past couple years the show has been just ‘meh’, not really funny (most of the time) — but back in 2008? It was still making me laugh my ass off — especially episodes like “Margaritaville”!“Margarita-Based Securities” to explain/jokingly mock Mortgage-Backed Securities, the clusterfuck of the credit crisis and resulting global financial crisis? Brilliant!!!
When did you start watching the show? By then it had already changed a lot from how it started.It still had its moments, but something was noticeably different from just a few years prior. It began feeling like a parody of itself.I’d say the peak of the show was seasons 5-9 (2001-2005).
I think that’s around when I lost interest in the show too.
Luckily for Warner Bros. Discovery, they’re presenting their case to the Court in as professional & as serious a manner as possible & not presenting themselves as ridiculous clowns wasting the taxpayer’s time & money. “THE ILLICIT COUNTER-CONSPIRACY” — That is a 100% stone-cold dead serious filing; & there’s no mf laughing at that.
I have HBO max and didn’t know South Park was on there :S
I just watch South Park on their official website: https://www.southparkstudios.com/
Can we be honest? The show went severely downhill circa 2008 and has been unwatchable since.
I stop actively watching after season 17. I watched a smattering of episodes in season 18 and 19 but I had completely checked out during season 20 with the whole serialized episodes.
What would Brian Boitano do?
He’d make a plan and see it through. That’s what Brian Boitano’d do.
You can be he’d kick an ass or two. Probably two, in this case.
LOL, Warner Bros. Discovery is like the stages of a cancer patient’s diminishing body in a form of a dying company.First they purge their streaming service’s most profitable shows and movies and their other MAJOR projects, murdering everything and going gung-ho in a brilliant fight-or-flight effort to save a wounded turkey while losing the entire platoon and then some.Then they increase prices on HBO Max further screwing the studios who both lost their shows/movies, and the audience who are more than past done with this nonsense. Then they renewed Velma for a season 2. Nothing more to be said about that.And now they want to cry out with tinfoil on their inflatable heads deeming that Paramount is continuously dealing on THEIR turf using South Park. (which, to be honest, in this state that they’re in, I think it’s very well deserved if it actually IS completely true.)That’s absolutely amazing. They are setting themselves up and it is unreal how much they cannot realize how this is going to backfire to the depth of hell. Who needs a Titanic II? We’re watching the iceberg form right here!