paramount international responded aggressively to Warner Bros. Discovery in a lawsuit for the broadcasting rights of South Park in the United States and seeks more than $50 million in unpaid fees.
The counterclaim, which paramount filed Wednesday, comes nearly two months after the feud between the two media giants began.
In February, Warner sued paramount, requesting hundreds of millions of dollars for what he believed to be a breach of contract. Warner alleged that Paramount withheld specials and other content related to “South Park” when your own fledgling streaming service, Paramount+was taking off.
Paramount filed a countersuit Wednesday, once again denying allegations that it failed to live up to its end of the bargain in its license agreement for the rights to “South Park” to Warner Bros. for your streaming service HBO Max.
The related content of “South Park” it was created during the height of the pandemic, when the show’s creators and staff could not normally meet to produce episodes and instead worked on features that ended up doubling the length of the usual 22-minute installments.
“Warner Bros. Discovery has indefensibly refused to pay more than $50 million it owes for South Park content that it has indisputably received and that HBO Max continues to broadcast and exploit,” a Paramount spokesperson said in a statement. “Warner Bros. Discovery’s argument that Paramount Global was obligated to deliver additional South Park content is unfounded and in no way supported by the parties’ agreement. Furthermore, it certainly does not justify WBD’s refusal to pay for immensely valuable content, all of which it has received and continues to benefit from.”
In the initial lawsuit, Warners said it agreed in 2019 to pay more than $500 million, or about $1.69 million per episode, to license episodes of the long-running cartoon featuring foul-mouthed elementary school kids for HBO Max. . “South Park” has been airing on the cable television network Comedy Central Paramount for decades.
Warner said in the earlier filing that during the bidding process for broadcast rights, Paramount had allegedly asked if they could share the rights to Paramount+. Warner rejected that proposal, saying that during the height of the pandemic, Paramount backed out of its contract and withheld content.
“We believe that Paramount and South Park Digital Studios engaged in a multi-year scheme of deception and unfair business practices, in flagrant and repeated breach of our contract, which clearly granted HBO Max exclusive streaming rights to the existing library and new content. from the popular animated comedy series ‘South Park,’” according to a Warner spokesperson.
Warner has alleged that the scheme was concocted when Paramount’s subsidiary MTV signed a deal with the creators of “South Park” in 2021, which required exclusive content for Paramount+, reportedly worth $900 million.
paramount alleges that Warner rejected two payments of more than $26 million in license fees owed to it in December 2022 and again in March 2023, adding that there have been “indications that it will continue to retain the $225 million in fees.” license fees still owed for the remainder of the five-year term.”
The company added that HBO Max from Warner, which will be re-released as Maxgoes on to present the complete “South Park” library.
Source: Ambito
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