South Park fans have at least five more years of Cartman, Stan, Kyle and Kenny to look forward to. Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of the long-running animated show South Park, have locked in a five-year deal to bring their show to the Paramount Plus streaming service and to give Paramount global streaming rights.
The duo will keep making 10 episodes per year, as reported in the Los Angeles Times; this deal replaces the one that the franchise had with HBO Max and its parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery. The South Park team was locked in negotiations for months for what would have been a $3 billion, 10-year deal, according to previous reports.
The deal covers only streaming rights and doesn’t include merchandising or what the pair’s production company Park County gets in a separate deal with Comedy Central to keep the show running on that network.
The show’s 27th season was delayed to July 23 because of the behind-the-scenes maneuvering involving an ongoing acquisition of Paramount by Skydance Media. The TV series began on Comedy Central in 1997.
Parker and Stone will take the stage at San Diego Comic-Con the day after the show’s premiere on July 24 for a panel with Saturday Night Live alum Andy Samberg and Beavis and Butt-Head creator Mike Judge.
What it means for TV viewers and the streaming industry
Paramount’s investment in South Park is “a bold bet on the future of streaming,” Jason Fairchild, CEO of tvScientific, a television advertising company, tells CNET.
“While other parts of the media landscape are consolidating or trimming fat, Paramount is doubling down on exclusive IP to anchor its platform and compete for attention in a crowded market,” Fairchild says.
Other streaming competitors including Netflix and Amazon’s Prime Video have cut deals for sports programming and global content, he says. “The underlying strategy is clear: own the content that drives subscriptions and engagement.”
Viewers, Fairchild says, could increasingly rely on ad-supported tiers of streaming services if they feel they can’t afford to access all the premium content they want across a fragmented field of paid streamers.
Seth Schachner, a former Sony executive who is now managing director at Strat Americas, a Los Angeles consulting firm, said Paramount’s deal “looks like a very forward-looking one, closer to what Netflix might look to do than what a traditional studio would do.”
The deal, Schachner says, could be the start of a trend for more direct creator-streamer deals.
“It would not surprise me if this agreement becomes a template for other big ticket programs which studios want to keep,” he says.
