Warner Bros. Discovery has filed a lawsuit accusing Paramount Global of reneging on parts of their $500 million licensing deal set in October 2019 which centered on the streaming rights to the “South Park” franchise.
Filed Friday in New York state Supreme Court, the suit asserts that Paramount breached the contract by steering “South Park” specials and other content towards its own Paramount+ platform “at the expense of Warner/HBO”.
They claim Paramount engaged in “multiple and flagrant duplicitous contortions of fact and breaches of contract and aim to “recover the hundreds of millions of dollars in damages” incurred.
The issue in part ties to what has been delivered. The lawsuit alleges that when HBO Max bid on the “South Park” streaming rights, it did so with the assurance there would be three new seasons of ten episodes each.
The suit alleges that only two episodes were delivered for the first of those seasons and only six for the second. HBO Max also understands that the third season will also consist of only six episodes – a total of 14 episodes across the three seasons rather than the 30 promised, thus HBO Max dramatically overpaid for the library.
In 2021, MTV announced a $900 million deal with show creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone for exclusive “South Park” content that would run on Paramount+ in the form of fourteen made-for-streaming South Park ‘films’. Four of those films have run to date.
HBO Max argues that the MTV deal required diverting content that should have fallen under its 2019 contract to Paramount+ instead – Paramount using “verbal trickery” to dub these films/events rather than episodes which would then fall under the 2019 agreement.
In response, Paramount has denied the allegations and accused Warner Bros. Discovery of failing to pay the license fees that it owes under the agreement.
A Paramount Global spokesperson says in a statement: “We believe these claims are without merit and look forward to demonstrating so through the legal process.”
Source: Variety
