There’s some trouble brewing in South Park

Ah, South Park – the often controversial satire full of foul language and crude humor, a 20-time nominee and five-time winner of the Primetime Emmy Awards, and, as of last week, the TV show at the heart of a lawsuit between two of Hollywood's major studios.

On Friday, Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) filed a lawsuit seeking over $200 million in damages from Paramount Global and South Park Digital Studios (SPDS), the production company run by South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, for violating the streaming exclusivity of a 2019 agreement.

Or as Cartman might say: “Respect mah authoriteh.”

💰Here’s what happened: In 2019, Paramount/SPDS and WBD signed a $500 million deal giving WBD the exclusive streaming rights to South Park’s over 300-episode back catalog. The deal also stipulated that SPDS would produce 30 brand-new episodes for WBD.

But much like a mailman on Sunday, SPDS didn’t deliver. Citing the COVID pandemic as the cause, the South Park team only made 10 new episodes for WBD – or 20 short of what was promised in the agreement.

Though following a 2021 deal with MTV, a subsidiary of Paramount, reportedly worth over $900 million (or as co-creator Matt Stone called it, “f*** you money.”), SPDS created several 50-minute “specials” that aired on Paramount+.

🤔 The argument: WBD called this a ““grammatical sleight-of-hand, characterizing new content as ‘movies,’ ‘films,’ or ‘events,’” so they were seen as categorically different from the “episodes” owed to WBD.