The gloves are well and truly off in the ongoing legal dispute between Paramount Global and Warner Bros. Discovery over the streaming rights for the ever-popular animated sitcom South Park, with the former slapping the latter with a $50 million countersuit in New York over unpaid licensing fees.
In response to a $200 million streaming rights suit WBD filed back in February, Paramount Global has hit back with a suit of their own, claiming that Warner Bros. continues to profit from South Park’s presence on HBO Max, while withholding licensing fees which were agreed upon in 2019, Deadline reports.
Back then, the two parties struck a $500 million deal to bring the entire South Park back catalog as well as future seasons to HBO, with the acquiring party to pay the relevant fees in $25 million installments once per quarter – which Warner Bros. Discovery has been following through on until recently, presumably surrounding Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s animated sitcom continued presence on HBO Max.
In its lengthy legal filing, Paramount called WBD’s claim about delivering additional South Park content “baseless and wholly unsupported agreement.” A spokesperson for HBO Max told Deadline the following of Paramount’s suit:
“We believe that Paramount and South Park Digital Studios embarked on a multi-year scheme of unfair trade practices and deception, flagrantly and repeatedly breaching our contract, which clearly gave HBO Max exclusive streaming rights to the existing library and new content from the popular animated comedy South Park.”
Needless to say, the entire matter is getting quite out of hand and messy for everyone involved. Except for perhaps the end consumer, who as of right now can catch a variety of South Park content on both HBO Max and Paramount Plus. The show itself, is of course likely to poke fun at the matter in its usual tongue-in-cheek way with specials like The Streaming Wars.
Published: Apr 20, 2023 12:13 am