Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, Eric Cartman and Kenny McCormick attend The Paley Center for Media presenting a special retrospective celebrating 20 seasons of “South Park” at The Paley Center for Media on September 1, 2016 in Beverly Hills, California.
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Discovery Warner Bros defendant Paramount Global desires to implement “South Park” streaming rights, setting the stage for a legal battle between the 2 media giants because the streaming wars escalate.
On Friday, Warner Bros. Discovery has filed a lawsuit against Paramount, South Park Digital Studios and MTV Entertainment looking for a whole lot of tens of millions of dollars for what it considers a breach of contract.
Warner said it agreed in 2019 to pay greater than $500 million, or about $1.69 million per episode, to license “South Park,” a long-running elementary school vulgar cartoon that aired on the Paramount cable network Comedy Central for a long time, for its own streaming platform HBO Max.
The filing stated that in the course of the bidding process for the rights to “South Park”, Paramount allegedly asked if Warner Bros. Discovery will consider releasing the rights to the show to Paramount’s own streaming service.
“Warner/HBO rejected the proposal as ‘non-starter'”, in keeping with the lawsuit.
Nonetheless, Warner alleged in its lawsuit that Paramount backed out of the deal and halted “South Park” promotions and other related content. The lawsuit points to Paramount’s own fledgling streaming service, Paramount+, as the rationale.
A Paramount spokesman denied Warner’s claims in Friday’s lawsuit, adding that Warner had stopped paying royalties.
“We consider these claims are unsubstantiated and are awaiting this to be demonstrated in a legal process,” a Paramount spokesperson said in an announcement. “We also note that Paramount continues to abide by the parties’ agreement by delivering recent South Park episodes to HBO Max, despite the indisputable fact that Warner Bros. Discovery didn’t pay the licensing fees that Paramount owes for episodes which have already been delivered and that HBO Max continues to air.”
Although the deal called for HBO Max to receive the primary episodes of the latest season of “South Park” in 2020, Paramount said it notified Warner in March that it might halt production of the season because of this of the pandemic
Warner then claims that “South Park” and its creators have moved on to supply other sorts of content, comparable to two pandemic-themed specials that aired between September 2020 and March 2021.
Warner further claims the plan was within the works when Paramount subsidiary MTV signed a cope with the makers of “South Park” in 2021 that required exclusive content for Paramount+, reportedly price $900 million.
“We consider that Paramount and South Park Digital Studios have launched into a multi-year plan of unfair trade practices and fraud, flagrantly and repeatedly violating our agreement that explicitly gave HBO Max exclusive streaming rights to its existing library and recent content from the favored animated comedy South Parksaid a Warner Bros. spokesman. Discovery in Friday’s statement.
The showdown is when streaming services struggle for subscribers and look to interrupt even within the near future. Media corporations spend billions of dollars on content to draw customers and have recently began to cut costs as increased competition has led to a slowdown in subscriber growth.
This week Warner Bros. Discovery reported a giant loss in its quarterly profits as the corporate faces a weakening promoting market, which has taken a toll on its revenue. Nonetheless, the corporate said it added 1.1 million global streaming subscribers, bringing the full to 96.1 million for services including HBO Max and Discovery+. Losses within the streaming industry also decreased to $217 million over the period, a “year-on-year improvement of $511 million.”
Warner Bros. Discovery plans to launch a combined streaming service for HBO Max and Discovery+ within the spring.
Meanwhile, Paramount said last week that Paramount+ hit 56 million subscribers within the last quarter. The corporate plans to lift the worth of its streaming service by pairing Paramount+ and Showtime later this 12 months. Paramount also said that the difficult promoting market was an element.