‘South Park’ Streaming Brawl: Warner Bros Discovery Fights To Keep Alive Suit Against Paramount Global & Series Creators

deadline.com:

The studios are putting on a united front when it comes to the striking scribes and actors, but Warner Bros Discovery and Paramount Global dust-up over who really has the streaming rights to Eric Cartman and the South Park gang shows no signs of settling down.

In the match of legal dodgeball that the David Zaslav and Shari Redstone-run conglomerates have been hurling at each other the past few months, WBD are now moving to have Paramount’s partial motion to dismiss tossed out. “Defendants’ Motion has the dubious distinction of trying to downplay while simultaneously highlighting the very misconduct which forced Plaintiff to file this suit,” declares WBD’s memorandum of opposition to the desire by Paramount and series creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone to disperse the Max parent company’s $200 million lawsuit (read it here). “The reality is that Defendant South Park Digital Studios agreed that Plaintiff’s HBO Max streaming platform would be the exclusive destination for consumers looking to stream new episodes of the popular comedy series South Park.

Defendants came to regret having granted these exclusive streaming rights to Plaintiff when Paramount Global launched its own streaming platform, Paramount+,” WBD adds with a whack.

In a Hollywood seemingly looking to cut costs and trim spending everywhere it can, the initially filed February 24 action over South Park comes from the $500 million 2019 deal where then AT&T-owned WarnerMedia snared multi-year domestic streaming rights to the 23-season past seasons of South Park plus several new seasons.