The massive, ugly South Park lawsuit moves a little closer to trial

For the last several years now, we've been keeping an eye on what is likely to end up being an extremely expensive, and extremely ugly, fight between Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount over Comedy Central series South Park. Said trial moved a little closer to "actual, in-universe fiscal bloodbath" earlier this week, per THR, when a member of New York's Supreme Court shut down an effort to get the suit dismissed on Paramount's behalf.

To refresh: The $200 million case comes down to a deal Warner Bros. signed with South Park Digital Studios (the company that technically makes South Park, which is co-owned by Paramount and series creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker) in 2019. Said deal saw Warner Bros. give SPSD a frankly jaw-dropping $500 million in exchange for becoming the streaming home of South Park, including for future episodes of the show through its 24th, 25th, and 26th seasons. Paramount has said, kind of understandably, that it was operating on the assumption that it was essentially buying itself 30 new streaming episodes of the show, since each previous season for the last several years had been 10 episodes in length.  And while the episodes would still air first on Comedy Central, the company also figured it had locked down exclusive streaming rights to all new South Park content for the next six or so years. (Hence why it was willing to shell out the premium price of more than $1 million per episode, which is a lot of resurrected Colorado Mexican restaurants.)

Thing is, Paramount decided to interpret the terms of that contract in a way that could, at best, probably be described as "creative," and, at worst, as "Kind of like a dickhead genie in a fable about not making wishes with dickhead genies." A lot of this, as noted in the order handed down on Tuesday from New York Justice Margaret A. Chan, comes down to the deal's "term sheet" not getting very specific about what a "season" of TV was. Which means, for instance, that when COVID lockdowns hit, and the show's total production slate in 2020 amounted to two 48-minute specials ("The Pandemic Special" and the following March's "South ParQ Vaccination Special") Paramount allegedly ended up saying, after some quibbling, "Yep, that was Season 24. All of it." Seasons 25 and 26, meanwhile, were only six episodes in length, instead of 10—possibly because Stone and Parker and their team were busy making five more specials between 2022 and 2024, which aired exclusively on Paramount's Paramount+ streaming service. Warner Bros. Discovery has, to put none too fine a point on it, been volcanically pissed about all of this.

Which brings us back around to Justice Chan shooting down Paramount's efforts to dismiss this week. (Among other things, she slapped down Paramount's assertion that it hadn't benefited financially from any of its alleged actions, since just getting the streaming rights to those Specials—and the subscriber revenue they generated—was benefit enough.) Chan argued that all of this is ambiguous enough that it definitely needs to undergo legal scrutiny, which means that the suit might soon be moving into the previously delaye discovery phase. Which companies tend to hate, because they have to open their pocketbooks and streaming numbers up to public lookie-loos so the courts can figure out how much an episode of South Park is actually "worth." God knows when this thing will actually, if ever, end up in a formal trial. But it's moving ever closer to the moment when someone may have to end up cutting someone else an absolutely massive honking check.