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What a long, strange, extraordinarily litigious trip it’s been: After five years, three “seasons,” and an enormous number of cries of “Shenanigans!” South Park is finally set to leave its online streaming home-away-from-home, HBO Max, on Tuesday, August 5. The series will now reside online exclusively on Paramount+, just as Paramount has been angling for ever since it realized—like, three months after doing it—that selling off the online rights to its biggest TV brand just as it was trying to re-launch a streaming service may not have been the smartest tactical move.
The five-year deal between Warner Bros. and Paramount, which saw the former company pay $500 million for the show’s online rights, actually expired a few weeks back, with the series existing on both Paramount+ and HBO Max in the intervening time. Paramount has now locked up streaming exclusivity for itself, though, as part of that massive $1.5 billion deal it signed with series creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone just hours before the show’s 27th season was slated to premiere. Finally, the company has South Park all to itself, without having to resort to any of the complicated shell games it pulled over the last few years to give itself South Park “specials” without (possibly) violating its agreement to give HBO Max domain over new South Park “episodes.”
Of course, whether any violations took place is still very much an open question, since—regardless of the deal expiring—Warner Bros. still has a $200 million lawsuit pointed at Paramount, accusing it of operating an “ILLICIT CONSPIRACY” to give Max significantly less than it paid for. (Basically, Warner says it deliberately over-paid for the streaming rights to the show’s earlier seasons because it figured the new seasons it was going to get the rights to would make up for it—and then got royally pissed off when those seasons were significantly shorter than previous ones, while Parker and Stone were also making exclusive content for Paramount.) The case is still slowly moving through the courts, with the last major movement being a decision back in January that paved the way for it potentially going to trial somewhere down the line
All of which is academic if you’re a U.S. Max subscriber and just want to stream South Park, of course: If that’s the case, you either need to binge like hell this weekend, or shift your viewing over to Paramount+.
[via THR]
