Why South Park Is Leaving Max For Paramount+ In 2025

Comedy Central

"South Park" has been a staple of the television landscape for nearly three decades. Since its debut in 1997, it's been right up there with "The Simpsons" and "Family Guy" as the most popular, influential animated series on the air (although it does feel like creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have found a way to stay a bit more relevant than recent episodes of "The Simpsons," for example). In that way, the show still has tremendous value. That's why the streaming rights have been, to put it mildly, a bit of a complicated mess.

What fans of the show need to be aware of is that, before long, every episode of "South Park" and all of the made-for-streaming specials will be streaming on Paramount+. As it stands, Max is home to the show's first 25 seasons, but that's going to change in 2025. As was confirmed by Paramount in a press release in February 2022, once that Max deal expires, everything will live under the Paramount+ roof. That being the case, it's probably worth explaining why this is happening, and how we got here in the first place.

Let's rewind the clock. In 2019, as the streaming wars were beginning to heat up, HBO Max cut a $500 million deal for the rights to "South Park." This was before Warner Bros. Discovery renamed the streamer simply to Max. Either way, this was a landmark transaction. It was also, rather crucially, before Paramount had its own streaming service. Comedy Central, where the show airs, is ultimately under the Paramount corporate umbrella. So, at the time, the company was happy to take the money. Things have since changed.

CBS All Access was rebranded as Paramount+ in 2021. Because of what happened during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdowns, every studio in town, save for Sony for the most part, went full-steam ahead into streaming, viewing it as the one and only future for the industry. It also meant that all of these companies wanted the best movies and TV shows they could get for those services. That brings us back to the "South Park" rights.

Comedy Central

Knowing the value that Parker and Stone bring to the table, Paramount signed the duo to a wild $900 million deal in 2021, one that included five more seasons of "South Park" as well as a series of streaming movies. Not only was that an eye-melting figure, but this is also when things started to get a little dicey, particularly for viewers who wanted to know where to find the show and those movies.

The movies, such as this year's "The End of Obesity," all premiered on Paramount+. Meanwhile, in 2022, the show's entire library began streaming on Paramount+ internationally. Also, beginning with "South Park" season 27, all of the new episodes will have their streaming debuts on Paramount+, not Max. All the while, viewers had become accustomed to Max being the place to stream "South Park," leading to a bit of confusion, or at the very least frustration. Two services were needed to stream the entire library.

Another key point is that Paramount knew it wasn't going to renew the deal with Max so it could once again have "South Park" in house. Similarly, in 2022, the studio made it clear that all of Paramount's movies would stream exclusively on Paramount+. While this hoarding mentality is changing a bit, at the time, the thinking was to keep everything for yourself and license nothing.

However, tensions arose between the two companies. Per CNN, in February 2023, Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns Max, sued Paramount for the "South Park" streaming movies, as well as a lack of new episodes produced during the terms of the $500 million deal. Essentially, WBD feels Paramount violated the exclusive terms of the deal. It's been messy for viewers and messy for the companies involved.

Paramount

Come what may of the lawsuit, Paramount is doing what it can to hang in there with the titans of streaming such as Netflix and Disney+. At this point, it's clear that not all of the major streamers operating right now will still be here in five years. Paramount, in particular, has largely been fighting an uphill battle thanks to deals made before Paramount+ launched. Case in point, "Yellowstone," the biggest show on cable, currently streams on Peacock. Taylor Sheridan's "Yellowstone" spin-off shows, such as "1923," are on Paramount+. Again, messy.

Circling back to "South Park," Parker and Stone skipped producing a new season in 2025, in part to avoid the election cycle, and in part because they're "waiting for Paramount to figure all their s*** out," as Parker explained to Vanity Fair. What s*** is he talking about, precisely? It could be that lawsuit, for one. It also could have been the Paramount merger with Skydance, which closed in July of this year. In any event, Parker and Stone are still on the hook for several seasons and a few more movies.

To boil all of this down, while we don't have a precise date, beginning in 2025, fans of "South Park" will need to subscribe to Paramount+ if they want to watch it. Simple as that. In the meantime, for all the completionists out there, both Max and Paramount+ are needed. It's all been a little chaotic with Parker and Stone serving as the only clear winners in the whole deal, having made what one might call f*** you money in the process. Viewers, meanwhile, are caught in the middle. One mustn't blame Parker and Stone, as they can't control what these corporations do. They just produce the show and make the best deal they can.

For those who don't wish to deal with streaming, you can buy every season of "South Park" on Blu-ray/DVD via Amazon.