Comedy Central
It’s a tumultuous time for Eric Cartman and the gang. On Friday, Warner Bros. Discovery filed a lawsuit in opposition to Paramount World in New York State Supreme Court docket over the $500 million South Parklicensing deal the 2 corporations signed in 2019. The corporate alleges that Paramount breached the contract on a number of ranges, costing WBD “a whole lot of thousands and thousands of dollars in damages.”
The go well with locations the overall damages at $200 million, with causes of motion together with breach of contract (in opposition to South Park Digital Studios), unjust enrichment (in opposition to Paramount and MTV), and tortious interference with contract (in opposition to Paramount and MTV.)
In 2019, when Paramount first struck the South Park deal, HBO Max was nonetheless owned by AT&T. The deal granted HBO Max the rights to South Park’s huge library, in addition to new episodes. Warner Bros. Discovery now alleges that moderately than ship on its promise of three new seasons, every spanning 10 episodes, Paramount delivered solely 16 episodes in whole. And in 2021, the Paramount-owned MTV introduced its personal $900 million deal for unique South Parkparticular episodes—all of which might land on Paramount’s personal streaming service, Paramount+.
A replica of Warner Bros. Discovery’s grievance reviewed by The Each day Beast alleges that when Paramount selected to launch Paramount+, “its priorities modified drastically, and Defendants launched into a multi-year scheme to unfairly make the most of Warner/HBO by breaching its contract and stealing its content material.” The lawsuit quotes a Paramount+ government who allegedly mentioned in 2021 that “[f]ranchising marquee content material like South Park” was “on the coronary heart” of the technique to develop the streaming platform.
The grievance additional states that Paramount, together with South Park Digital Studios, “engaged in a marketing campaign of verbal trickery” to get round their pact. “To perform this, Defendants used grammatical sleight-of-hand, characterizing new content material as ‘films,’ ‘movies,’ or ‘occasions’ …”
A consultant for Paramount World advised Indiewire that the corporate appears to be like ahead to proving that Warner Bros. Discovery’s claims “are with out advantage.”
The assertion provides: “We additionally be aware that Paramount continues to stick to the events’ contract by delivering new South Park episodes to HBO Max, even though Warner Bros. Discovery has failed and refused to pay license charges that it owes to Paramount for episodes which have already been delivered, and which HBO Max continues to stream.”