Introducing Endless Mode: A New Games & Anime Site from Paste
International South Park fans are already feeling the burn from the cartoon’s falling out with its long-time owners, Paramount. Amid ongoing and increasingly ugly negotiations regarding the streaming rights to the series, The Hollywood Reporter confirms that South Park is no longer available on streamers outside the United States. The news comes shortly after Paramount punted the premiere date of South Park‘s 27th season by two weeks, from July 9 to July 23, due to issues stemming from Paramount Global and Skydance’s impending merger, which the creators call “a shitshow.” “It’s fucking up South Park,” the creators X’d from the official South Park account. “We are at the studio working on new episodes, and we hope the fans get to see them somehow.”
The standoff between South Park and Paramount-Skydance comes down to the digital rights to the show, which Stone and Parker snagged in 2007, while studios and networks were waiting for Netflix to crater its entire business model. After Paramount sold the streaming rights to South Park to Warner Bros. Discovery, so that WBD could feature the show on HBO Max, Paramount wanted the show back under the mountain for its streamer, Paramount+. More recently, Stone and Parker accused RedBird Capital executive Jeff Shell, Paramount Global’s next president should the merger go through, of inserting himself into contract negotiations with WBD and Netflix. They have threatened Shell, RedBird, and Skydance with legal action for the contract tampering.
The merger is still awaiting approval from the FCC, which Paramount has gone to great lengths to appease, including settling a $20 billion lawsuit with President Trump over Kamala Harris’ 60 Minutes interview, paying the president $16 million so that he would leave them alone. Lawmakers have accused Paramount of bribery over the settlement. Meanwhile, Skydance is continuing to flirt with far-right outrage architects, including, per The New York Times, entering talks to acquire Bari Weiss’ The Free Press. Despite all this, the merger is still pending. We hope the shareholders enjoy the deterioration of the thing they’re supposedly buying because it sounds pretty bad for the rest of us.
