After months of behind the scenes power plays, lawsuits on standby, and some good old fashioned industry spite, ‘South Park’ is officially heading home to Paramount+. You read right, creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone are pocketing a staggering $1.5 billion for the ride.
As reported by LA Times: The five year deal, struck through their production house Park County, gives Paramount global streaming rights to the animated juggernaut, raking in $300 million a year. For context: that’s $30 million per episode, as Parker and Stone have only committed to 10 new episodes annually.
Don’t confuse this for a clean corporate handshake though, the deal only came together after negotiations with Warner Bros. Discovery collapsed over the weekend. For a hot minute, Paramount was floating the idea of co-licensing the show with HBO Max, where ‘South Park’ has lived since 2019, but that fell apart faster than Kenny in a snowstorm.
This move finally puts ‘South Park’ on Paramount+ in the U.S. for the first time. The streaming war for the series got especially ugly, with the creators threatening legal action against Paramount’s soon to be overlords at Skydance Media. Insiders say litigation was on the table as recently as last week, with heavy hitting lawyers locked and loaded.
Despite the mess, Paramount had plenty of motivation to close the deal before Season 27 kicked off tonight and before Parker and Stone hit the Comic Con stage on Thursday. PR disaster averted, barely.
Thanks to a 2007 joint venture, Park County also scores nearly half of all streaming revenue via South Park Digital Studios, meaning they’re not just raking it in, they’re double dipping.
No word yet on the separate $900 million Comedy Central deal renewal, but let’s be real: Cartman isn’t going anywhere.
