Warner Bros. Discovery sues Paramount over famed South Park Series

Warner Bros. Discovery has sued Paramount after accusing it of allegedly “stealing” South Park content that it reportedly has the exclusive streaming rights to, according to court documents seen by MARKETING-INTERACTIVE. In the lawsuit, which was filed last week Warner Bros. Discovery claimed that Paramount worked with South Park's creators and its MTV subsidiary to divert as much of the new South Park content as possible to Paramount Plus to attract viewers to the platform when it launched. 

"When Paramount decided to launch a new streaming platform of its own, its priorities changed drastically, and defendants embarked on a multi-year scheme to unfairly take advantage of Warner/HBO by breaching its contract and stealing its content," the court documents read. It continued by saying that the South Park series is an extremely valuable one that has remained wildly popular in the over twenty years that it has been on the air. 

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The lawsuit comes after Warner Bros. Discovery said that it paid about US$1.6 million for each of the over 300 episodes that South Park Digital Studios (SPDS). SPDS is a joint venture between Paramount and the creators of South Park. Warner Bros. Discovery claimed that Paramount, “induced” South Park Digital Studios to breach this contract with Warner Bros. Discovery.

The deal was set to see HBO Max getting the entire show as well as 30 upcoming episodes for seasons 24, 25, and 26 until June 2025. However, Warner Bros. Discovery claims that it SPDS did not give them the 10 new episodes for each season as promised and that they changed extra for a 50-minute Pandemic Special. The lawsuit also mentioned a US$900 million deal Paramount had with the creators of SouthPark in 2021. The deal states that South Park would exclusively stream on Paramount Plus after its contract with HBO Max ends.

The studio also went on to create several Paramount Plus-exclusive specials of the show. 2022. Warner Bros. Discovery claims these specials should’ve been included in their contract.

It stated that SPDS, acting in concert with Paramount and MTV, engaged in "a campaign of verbal trickery designed to circumvent the terms of the 2019 agreement. "To accomplish this, defendants used grammatical sleight-of-hand, characterizing new content as ‘movies,’ ‘films,’ or ‘events’ to side-step SPDS’s contractual obligations"

Paramount has since said that these claims are without merit, according to media reports. It added that Warner Bros. Discovery failed and refused to pay license fees that it owed to Paramount for certain episodes which were already delivered. 

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