Why Is Warner Bros Suing Paramount Over ‘South Park’?

Typically whenever South Park makes headlines, it’s for a crude joke or a cringe-worthy portrayal. That wasn’t the case this February when it was revealed that Warner Bros. Discovery was suing Paramount Global for breach of contract. So in the wake of Season 26, what exactly does this lawsuit entail?

To understand the South Park lawsuit, you have to go back a few years. Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s Comedy Central show has stood at the center of two jaw-droppingly huge streaming deals. In 2019, HBO Max paid a reported $500 million for the exclusive streaming rights to the animated comedy. According to Warner Bros. Discovery’s recent lawsuit, that worked out to$1.69 million per episode. This deal included the show’s library of over 300 episodes as well as any new episodes that may premiere through June of 2025. It’s that “new episode” clause that’s most important. Two years later, Stone and Parker signed another deal, this time with their parent company, Paramount Global. This second $900 million deal renewed the series through Season 30 and made Paramount+ the exclusive home to 14 hourlong TV movies.

Per the lawsuit, Warner Bros. Discovery claims the Paramount deal was an “illicit scheme to unfairly and deceptively divert” new episodes of the show to Paramount+. Intense language aside, it’s hard to argue with the fact that HBO Max seems to have gotten the short end of this stick. Whereas Paramount+ has debuted four exclusive, extra-length South Park specials, HBO Max has only added 14 new episodes of the series to its library: two from Season 24, six from Season 25, and six more from Season 26. That’s less than half of the 30 episodes the streamer expected to see.

For its part, South Park Studios has given reasons for these shortened seasons, citing pandemic restrictions. There’s also the history of the show to keep in mind. There has never been consistency in the number of episodes in any season. South Park has gleefully jumped from 17 episode seasons to 14 episodes, back to 17, and then to 15 episodes. Still, at six episodes, that makes it one of the second shortest seasons in the show’s history, only trumped by 2020’s two-episode season.

Typically when it comes to shows that have been around as long as this one, its library is far more valuable than new episodes. That’s not necessarily the case with South Park, a show that routinely sees spikes in interest as new episodes drop. According to Google Trends, the series had its biggest spike in five years days after the premiere of “The Worldwide Privacy Tour,” a Season 26 episode that mocked Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s odd media behavior.

That jump in interest is an example of why this lawsuit is happening in the first place. South Park has never just been a show. It’s a pop culture event. Whether it was threatening to show the Prophet Muhammad, making Joe Paterno jokes days after the Penn State scandal broke, or testing the limits on how many times you can say “shit” on cable television, South Park has always served as a litmus test as to what you can and can’t say on television. As a result, the anger and discussion around the show have become just as valuable as the series itself. Shortening seasons down to six episodes means there are fewer opportunities for HBO Max to benefit from these social media-dominating moments.

There’s no telling how this lawsuit will end or what precedents it will set for future deals. But this season has proven one thing: South Park is still as relevant as ever in 2023 – both to the world at large, and the companies who have financial stakes in it.