South Park has been saved.
Just hours before the Comedy Central show’s season 27 premiere on July 23 (a premiere that had already been pushed back due to the uncertainty of a new deal), Paramount and Park County, the venture creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker run and which produces the show, have reached a new deal.
The agreement means that South Park’s new season will debut as scheduled. The deal runs for five years and encompasses 50 new episodes of the show to debut on Comedy Central. In addition, the companies have inked an expansive new streaming partnership (via their joint venture South Park Digital Studios) that will bring South Park’s library to Paramount+ in both the United States, where HBO Max has held the rights for years, and globally. New episodes will also stream on Paramount+ in the U.S. the day after they air on Comedy Central under the pact.
A source pegged the value of the deal at about $1.5 billion.
“Trey and I and the whole South Park crew are grateful for this extension and this deal. We want to thank [Paramount co-CEO and president of Showtime/MTV Entertainment] Chris McCarthy and [COO] Keyes Hill-Edgar for years of great partnership and are looking forward to continuing to make South Park for the next five years,” said Stone.
Added Parker, “We are grateful for this opportunity and deeply honored by the trust placed in us. This is about more than a contract — it’s about our commitment to this organization, our teammates, and our fans. We’re focused on building something special and doing whatever it takes to bring championships to this city.”
Streaming deals for the show expired on June 23, forcing an extension of a domestic deal with Warner Bros. Discovery to keep it on HBO Max for now. Earlier this month, Paramount+’s international license to stream episodes of the long-running animated series expired, which led to the streamer pulling the series from its global service. Park County has an unusual arrangement with Paramount, with the production company receiving about 50 percent of all streaming revenue, even as Paramount retains ownership of the show.
“Matt and Trey are singular, creative forces whose fearless humor and boundary pushing storytelling have made South Park one of the most beloved and enduring series ever — more popular today than at any point in its history, and one of the most valuable TV franchises in the world,” said McCarthy. “They are exceptional talents and trusted partners. We’re thrilled that Comedy Central and now Paramount+ globally will be the home to South Park for years to come and our thanks to the Skydance team for their vital partnership in making this happen.”
The deal also comes after a heated but quiet behind-the-scenes legal dispute between Park County, Paramount Global, and Skydance, which is set to assume control of Paramount in the coming weeks. It was a dispute that had some sources concerned about the show’s future.
Parker and Stone were seeking an extension of their current first-look deal with the company, which a source pegged at being worth about $150 million per year during its six-year term. That agreement had a couple of years left, but the creators were seeking an early extension that could coincide with a streaming agreement.
However, Skydance leadership, including CEO David Ellison and incoming president Jeff Shell, had approval rights on any deals that met a certain threshold, and the Park County deal fit that bill.
Earlier this month, The Hollywood Reporter learned that Park County believed it had struck a basic framework with Paramount on a new 10-year, $3 billion deal, roughly three times the value of their last agreement. Skydance, however, was reluctant to sign off a deal that long, fearing how the streaming market could change by then.
At $1.5 billion, the new deal would be worth about $300 million per year, albeit with the shorter time frame that Skydance had been pushing for. While $1.5 billion is an extraordinarily high number for what amounts to 50 episodes of TV, a source said that the overall deal also functioned as an advance on the streaming revenue, helping to explain the cost.
When the talks were most heated, Parker and Stone brought on Bryan Freedman, a prominent lawyer and bulldog negotiator known for aggressive legal maneuvering, underscoring how the dispute had escalated.
“This merger is a shitshow and it’s fucking up South Park. We are at the studio working on new episodes and we hope the fans get to see them somehow,’” Parker and Stone wrote in a social media post on July 2, after Comedy Central announced that the season 27 premiere had been pushed by a few weeks.
In a precursor to the legal dispute, Park County threatened legal action against Shell for allegedly urging Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery to modify certain terms of their offers for the show in a “manner calculated to benefit Paramount at the expense” of the company. It pointed to Shell urging WBD to give Paramount+ an exclusive 12-month window for new episodes of the show and to shorten the term of the deal from 10 to five years, which could worsen the studio’s bid for the series.
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