HBO Max sues Paramount over $500M 'South Park' streaming rights deal
Some little foul-mouthed children in Colorado have ended up in a big-money media dispute. HBO Max parent Warner Bros. Discovery (NASDAQ:WBD) has sued Paramount Global (NASDAQ:PARA) (NASDAQ:PARAA) in a fight over streaming rights to longtime Comedy Central series South Park, launched in 1997.
WBD is accusing Paramount of reneging on parts of a 2019 deal for a notable $500M that licensed streaming rights to South Park to HBO Max. (Comedy Central is part of MTV Entertainment, itself a part of Paramount.)
That includes the accusation that Paramount "blatantly intended to prop up Paramount+ at the expense of Warner/HBO" by steering specials and other content to its own growing platform instead of HBO's.
HBO Max says that when it entered the $500M deal in late 2019 (ahead of the following spring's launch of HBO Max), it was assured there would be three new seasons of 10 episodes each - but that it only received two episodes for the first of those, and just six for the second. It also says it understands the third season will also have just six episodes.
Meanwhile, MTV in 2021 announced a $900M deal with the show's creators for exclusive content for Paramount+ - content that HBO believes should have fallen under its own deal, but were instead characterized as "movies," "films" or "events" rather than episodes - a bit of "verbal trickery," HBO Max says.
The suit was filed Friday in New York state Supreme Court, Variety noted.