South Park Is Headed to a New Streaming Service (But It’s Complicated)

South Park will be streaming on a new service when the much-anticipated season 27 premieres on Comedy Central, but it’s a bit more complicated than just leaving one place and heading to another. South Park will start to stream on Paramount+ with the July 9th season 27 premiere, and that premiere date seems to have been chosen quite specifically, as it occurs just over a week after Paramount’s exclusive South Park streaming licensing deal with HBO Max ends on June 30th. That said, according to a new report from Deadline, there’s still a possibility that it’s not leaving HBO Max.

This is where it gets complicated. So back in 2019, Paramount and Warner Media agreed to an exclusive domestic streaming rights deal for $300 million, which included past seasons and new seasons of South Park. This happened before the launch of Paramount + however, so when the service launched, South Park created a number of specials that were not part of the HBO Max deal, and that prompted Warner Bros. Discovery to file a lawsuit against Paramount, which is still pending.

Now South Park will stream new seasons and existing content on Paramount+, but the report states that there are conversations happening that would keep South Park on HBO Max. Sources are saying that the talks are preliminary though, and are part of Paramount taking the series to market. That could result in Paramount+ not being the exclusive home of South Park if Paramount decides to share the series with HBO Max, but we’ll have to wait and see.

In 2021, South Park co-creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone renewed their deal (via Deadline) with Paramount through 2027, and that included the 14 original movies for Paramount+. “Matt and Trey are world-class creatives who brilliantly use their outrageous humor to skewer the absurdities of our culture and we are excited to expand and deepen our long relationship with them to help fuel Paramount+ and Comedy Central,” said Chris McCarthy, President/CEO -MTV Entertainment & CCO/Adult Animation – Paramount+. “Franchising marquee content like South Park and developing new IP with tremendous talent like Matt and Trey, is at the heart of our strategy to continue growing Paramount+.”

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“Comedy Central has been our home for 25 years and we’re really happy that they’ve made a commitment to us for the next 75 years,” said Parker and Stone. “When we came to ViacomCBS with a different way to produce the show during the pandemic, Chris (McCarthy), Nina (Diaz), Keyes (Hill-Edgar) and Tanya (Giles) were immediately supportive and enabled us to try something new that turned out to be really well received. We can’t wait to get back to doing traditional South Park episodes but now we can also try out new formats. It’s great to have partners who will always take a chance with us.”

Season 26 actually took place in 2023, and while three specials have aired since then, it’s been two years between seasons. While outside projects were a factor, Parker and Stone previously told Vanity Fair that they wanted to avoid the 2024 Presidential elections, while also waiting for Paramount to figure things out.

Are you excited for a new season of South Park? Let us know in the comments, and you can talk all things TV and South Park with me on Bluesky @knightofoa!