With no signs of settling in sight, Warner Bros Discovery and Paramount Global have been in a seemingly never ending fight over who truly owns the rights to streaming the comedy series South Park. According to Deadline, David Zaslav, CEO of Warner Bros Discovery and Shari Redstone, the President of National Amusements, which also doubles as the parent company to Paramount, have been hurling lawsuit after lawsuit against each other for the past couple months.
Warner Bros Discovery is attempting to have Paramount’s partial motion to dismiss completely disregarded. Warner Bros Discovery stated in the memorandum of opposition, or a document recording the terms of contract or other legal details, states that the “Defendants’ Motion has the dubious distinction of trying to downplay while simultaneously highlighting the very misconduct which forced Plaintiff to file this suit.” According to Deadline, Warner Bros Discovery made a statement saying that “the reality if the 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 series South Park. Defendants came to regret having granted these exclusive streaming rights to Plaintiff when Paramount Global launched its own streaming platform, Paramount+.”
Initially, the suit over South Park was filed on February 24 and comes from the $500 million 2019 deal when WarnerMedia bagged streaming rights to new and past episodes of the animated comedy. This deal added around 300 episodes of South Park to Warner’s inventory. The agreement was meant to be paid quarterly in installments of $25 million to what was then Viacom. That was until Warner Bros Discovery stopped the cash flow in protest but continued to stream South Park.
Warner Bros Discovery also alleges that Paramount and MTV Entertainment found a sort of loophole in the original deal that gave them the ability to retain new seasons of South Park and over a dozen “original movies” that are based upon the series. To add salt to the wound, according to Deadline, Paramount+ stated that by 2025 they would be the global streaming hub for every single South Park episode, movies and made-for-streaming movies.
Within their East coast filing opposition, Warner Bros Discovery states that “in short, Defendants’ assertions that it provided all required content to Plaintiff are contradicted by the multitude of factual allegations evincing SPDS’s bad faith conduct in diverting new South Park episodes to Paramount+ after granting exclusive streaming rights in such content to Plaintiff. At most, Defendants’ assertions present a disputed issue of fact that a jury will need to decide, not grounds for dismissal of Plaintiff’s well-pled claims at the initial pleading stage.” The 27 page memorandum continues on with “this is not merely ‘garden variety’ behavior as Defendants argue. Rather, it is a textbook example of bad faith business conduct, with a consequential adverse impact on consumers at large. Plaintiff’s claims are based on well-pled factual allegations that go far beyond the minimal requirements necessary to withstand a motion to dismiss. Defendants’ Motion is groundless and should be denied in its entirety.”
According to Deadline, the opposition is requesting that New York Judge Margaret Chan schedules “an oral argument hearing on whether Paramount Global’s partial motion can go forward or not.”