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The saga of Paramount+ trying to get the streaming rights to South Park has been significantly longer, more arduous, and filled with lawsuits and other legal fuckery than you might expect, given the fairly basic fact that parent company Paramount literally co-owns the show. And yet, it’s been going on now for years, ever since a past regime at Paramount sold the show’s streaming rights to Warner Bros. back in 2019 for half a billion dollars—which has, among other things, caused a massive lawsuit to break out between the two companies, after newer heads at Paramount started getting cute with things like lengths of seasons and definitions of the word “special” in order to get their own homegrown streamer some South Park content. But that’s (mostly) over now: The lawsuit is still pending, but the deal itself is set to expire, meaning Paramount will be free to sell the streaming rights to the series to itself. Right?
Anyway, The L.A. Times has a piece this week suggesting that streaming negotiations between Paramount and South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone (who own, with Paramount, South Park Digital Studios, the entity that actually makes the show) have not been going as smoothly as they could be. And the root cause, shock of shocks, is Paramount’s pending merger with Skydance Media, which continues to have big and deforming effects on the whole pop culture (and political) landscape. See, the folks at Skydance aren’t sure South Park is worth as much as Paramount thinks. Normally, that shouldn’t matter, because the merger hasn’t gone through yet, but the ongoing negotiations between the two companies have included granting Skydance approval over especially expensive purchases.
Which South Park will almost certainly be: The Times piece says the streaming rights to the show are valued at at least $200 million. (That’s in addition to whatever deal Paramount ends up making to extend the show’s overall contract, which still has two years on it.) Paramount clearly believes the series is hugely important to its streaming fortunes, and is willing to pay to finally get it. (Co-CEO Chris McCarthy very confidently stated that the series would be arriving on Paramount+ in July, which may end up looking kind of embarrassing if this doesn’t go through.) But Skydance is reportedly more skeptical—all while the whole thing is also laboring under the uncertainty of the merger as a whole, which is being held hostage by the FCC over the White House’s squabbles with CBS News.
