The ‘South Park’ Streaming War Is Headed Toward A Trial

Warner Bros. Discovery just struck a major blow to Paramount Global over the streaming rights to the South Park catalog. We’re all gonna be swimming in piss soon, aren’t we?  

Just like the water that trickles down from the snowcaps in the Rocky mountains, the South Park streaming rights are as valuable as they are contested, and the legal battle over South Park content appears to be headed toward all-out war after Justice Margaret A. Chan of State Supreme Court in Manhattan made a crucial ruling in Warner Bros. Discovery’s favor in their protracted conflict with Paramount Global. On Tuesday, Justice Chan ruled that Paramount may have “actively convinced” South Park Digital Studios to breach their massive, half-billion-dollar streaming deal with Warner Bros., opening the door for WBD to take some of the claims from their 2023 lawsuit to court.  

Only legal experts can properly explain how exactly WBD successfully brought their lawsuit against Paramount Global to the point where a trial is possible, but even us non-lawyers can have our theories — for a complaint this costly, Warner Bros. must have brought in a formidable Karen.

In 2019, the company formerly known as WarnerMedia struck a massive, $500 million deal with the company then called ViacomCBS, an agreement which WarnerMedia believed would secure them streaming rights to the massive South Park back catalog and all new South Park episodes made between 2019 and 2024. At the time, WarnerMedia was still amassing its immense library for HBO Max, and the company that owned the rights to South Park still hadn’t launched its own premium streaming service, Paramount+, but what is now Warner Bros. Discovery claims that their business partner’s real plan for South Park streaming blindsided WBD and breached the hefty contract the two media megacorporations signed. 

South Park fans know all-too-well that the series definitely didn’t have an exclusive and all-inclusive streaming home between 2019 and 2024, despite what WBD believed when they inked the deal. Shortly after hundreds of South Park episodes migrated to HBO Max (later just Max), Paramount Global and South Park Studios began producing streaming specials for Paramount+, with Paramount Global arguing that the that their own exclusive South Park content didn’t fall within the confines of their deal with WBD because they categorized projects like South Park: The Streaming Wars as “specials” and not simply “episodes.”

As The Hollywood Reporter explained of this past Tuesday's development, “The ruling opens the door to discovery on Paramount’s understanding of its deal with WBD and whether the company took fraudulent measures to take advantage of ambiguity in the contract,” adding that the courts could force Paramount to hand over “viewership data, as well as subscriber and profitability metrics.” 

Also included in WBD’s lawsuit is a claim that South Park Studio’s decision to drastically shorten each South Park season from 25-ish episodes to just six measly installments over the duration of the deal is a breach of their contract, which may actually cause South Park fans to side with David Zaslav. Even the man who literally cuts content for a living knows that six new South Park episodes every two years is total bull crap.