Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. is suing Paramount Global, saying its competitor aired new episodes of the popular animated comedy series "South Park" after Warner paid for exclusive rights.
Warner says it signed a contract in 2019 paying more than $500 million for the rights to existing and new episodes of the irreverent show, according to a lawsuit filed Friday in New York State Supreme Court.
HBO Max, Warner's streaming platform, was scheduled to receive the first episodes of a new "South Park" season in 2020. But the company was informed the pandemic halted production, the lawsuit says.
In spite of Warner's exclusive rights to the show until 2025, the company alleges South Park Digital Studios, which produces the shows and is named as a defendant in the lawsuit, offered two pandemic-themed specials to Paramount, which aired them in September 2020 and March 2021.
The lawsuit claims the pandemic specials should have been offered to Warner under the initial contract. The move, called "verbal trickery" in the lawsuit, drove the show's fans to the competing Paramount platform. Nearly all South Park episodes premiere on Comedy Central, one of Paramount's cable channels, the lawsuit says.
Show creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, who launched the show in 1997 and oversee the franchise, were not named in the lawsuit.
Gaining streaming rights to "South Park" is a competitive process because of the potentially lucrative market attracting more subscribers, advertisers and a loyal fan base that Warner's lawsuit says consists mostly of young adults.
The 24-page court filing also cites a $900 million deal in 2021 between a Paramount subsidiary and South Park Digital Studios for exclusive content on the Paramount Plus streaming service, which launched the same year.
Warner claims the deal was a deliberate "scheme" between Paramount, its subsidiary MTV Entertainment Studios and South Park Digital Studios to "divert as much of the new South Park content as possible to Paramount Plus in order to boost that nascent streaming platform."
Warner paid $1,687,500 per episode and alleges it has not yet received all episodes covered by the contract, resulting in damages of more than $200 million.
Paramount Global did not immediately respond to emails from The Associated Press seeking comment on the lawsuit.
Jennifer Kent On Why Her Feature Directing Debut, “The Babadook,” Continues To Haunt Us
"The Babadook," when it was released 10 years ago, didn't seem to portend a cultural sensation.
It was the first film by a little-known Australian filmmaker, Jennifer Kent. It had that strange name. On opening weekend, it played in two theaters.
But with time, the long shadows of "The Babadook" continued to envelop moviegoers. Its rerelease this weekend in theaters, a decade later, is less of a reminder of a sleeper 2014 indie hit than it is a chance to revisit a horror milestone that continues to cast a dark spell.
Not many small-budget, first-feature films can be fairly said to have shifted cinema but Kent's directorial debut may be one of them. It was at the nexus of that much-debated term "elevated horror." But regardless of that label, it helped kicked off a wave of challenging, filmmaker-driven genre movies like "It Follows," "Get Out" and "Hereditary."
Kent, 55, has watched all of this — and those many "Babadook" memes — unfold over the years with a mix of elation and confusion. Her film was inspired in part by the death of her father, and its horror elements likewise arise out of the suppression of emotions. A single mother (Essie Davis) is struggling with raising her young son (Noah Wiseman) years after the tragic death of her husband. A figure from a pop-up children's book begins to appear. As things grow more intense, his name is drawn out in three chilling syllables — "Bah-Bah-Doooook" — an incantation of unprocessed grief.
Kent recently spoke from her native Australia to reflect on the origins and continuing life of "The Babadook."
Q: Given that you didn't set out to in any way "change" horror, how have you regarded the unique afterlife of "The... Read More