You’re not alone if the Paramount+ South Park movie agreement looked strange considering HBO Max earned an exclusive for the property. Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) has filed a lawsuit against Paramount Global for allegedly violating the terms of a $500 million deal that granted HBO Max streaming rights to South Park in 2019. WBD says that Paramount “blatantly intended” to drive consumers towards its service by not only supplying additional specials but also by underdelivering on promised regular season programming to the HBO service.
According to reports, HBO Max has been promised three fresh seasons of ten episodes each. Nevertheless, the supplier claims that it only received eight episodes over the two seasons given and that the following season’s six episodes will likewise fall short. Moreover, it is said that Paramount utilised “verbal deception” to rebrand footage as movies or events in order to avoid transmitting video to its competition.
According to a statement sent to Engadget, the complaint is “without merit.” It also insists on upholding the deal despite Warner allegedly failing to pay licence costs for previously delivered South Park episodes. WBD has been contacted for comment.
The lawsuit is not surprising. WBD, formerly WarnerMedia, was keen to accumulate as much material for HBO Max as possible before its 2020 debut, including Friends and Doctor Who. Whether or not Paramount broke its contract, the South Park material on Paramount+ reduces HBO Max’s content edge – you no longer have to utilise that service if you want to watch Cartman and the gang’s most recent exploits.
Nonetheless, Mount has many grounds to oppose the case. Even while competitors like Netflix struggle, Mount+ is growing, with 43 million subscribers as of late spring. Although it’s unclear how much of that increase is due to South Park, the firm may be unwilling to give up streaming rights for one of its most well-known series (Paramount owns Comedy Central, after all) without a struggle.
