‘South Park’: the keys to the lawsuit for breaching a contract of 500 million dollars

Cartman, Stan, Kyle and Kenny have been involved in a multi-million dollar lawsuit. Warner Bros. Discovery, the company to which HBO Max belongs, has filed a complaint in the New York courts to invalidate the agreement they have with Paramount Global on account of ‘South Park’, one of the 22 best adult animated series current. They allege breach of contract. The reason? That despite having the rights to the new installments that are coming out of the series, Paramount would have looked for a fine print to release new content from it on its own platform. We explain it in detail.

In September 2019, a million-dollar agreement was announced: Warner paid 500 million dollars to Paramount for acquire streaming rights to ‘South Park’ for five years and exclusively in the United States. This implied that the platform would have all the episodes of the old seasons, 22 at that time, and that the new ones would continue to air on the Comedy Central cable channel and then go to HBO Max. And so it was done with season 23, which aired between September and December of that year. No problem. HBO Max relied not only on the existing archive, but on having 10 episodes per season as usual; the deal included seasons 24-26 and also called for long-form episodes longer than 20 minutes to air on Comedy Central.

However, ‘South Park’ season 24 had only two episodes due to the pandemic (aired in September 2020 and March 2021). The next thing that could be seen of the animated series were pandemic specials (aired in November and December 2021), but instead of airing on Comedy Central, and therefore later moving to HBO Max, they were released on Paramount +. How did they dodge the exclusivity agreement here? Because they relied on the terminology: they were not considered “episodes” but special “events”. And that’s when on HBO Max they start to frown and get pissed off like monkeys.

The fact of the matter is that when they signed the 2019 deal, Paramount Global had no intention of jumping into the streaming market with its own platform, but then changed his mind and ended up launching Paramount+. And he realized that one of his greatest assets, the series ‘South Park’, could not serve as a lure to get subscribers. Or if? Paramount Global then devised a strategy with SPDS, a company owned by themselves and the creators of ‘South Park’, Matt Stone and Trey Parker. They would write off that “fine print” that allowed them to release “pandemic specials” on Paramount+ instead of Comedy Central.

In August 2021, they announced a piece of news: MTV Entertainment Studios would expand the series through 14 films for Paramount+, after a six-year agreement with the creators of the series valued at 900 million dollars. That is HBO Max would have secured the seasons of the series, yes, but Paramount+ would keep the new “movies”. According to Warner’s complaint, the naming of “films” is a “calculated and deliberate attempt” to circumvent their agreement. On this, one thing must be clarified: in recent years, ‘South Park’ has followed a continuous plot – unlike the classic seasons with an episodic structure – and both the series and the films follow the same chronology, that is, that HBO Max not only didn’t have all the content, he had the incomplete story.

“Instead of fulfilling its obligation to Warner/HBO, SPDS, acting in conjunction with Paramount and MTV, has participated in a verbal deception campaign designed to circumvent the terms of the 2019 agreement. To achieve this, the defendants used grammatical deception, naming the new content as “movies” or “events” to avoid contractual obligations, “says the Warner Bros. Discovery complaint. If season 24 had only two episodes due to the pandemic, La 25, with normality already recovered, would not return to the usual size of ten installments, but only had six (issued between February and March 2022). Later, Paramount + would enjoy two new specials (in June and July of that year). which, to make matters worse, were entitled ‘The Streaming Wars’.

Thus, Warner Bros. Discovery maintains that Paramount Global has breached the contract of 500 million dollars that they had for the exclusivity in streaming of ‘South Park’ and adds that Paramount + has benefited enormously from the series to obtain subscribers. Now It remains to be seen if the courts agree with him. and, if so, how much money they can recover.