The biggest news this week isn’t just that South Park is finally coming home to Paramount+. It’s how it’s coming and how much it’s costing. Trey Parker and Matt Stone have inked a new five-year, $1.5 billion global streaming rights agreement with Paramount, marking one of the most expensive animation deals in recent memory and putting to rest months of public friction between the creators and the studio.
Valued at $300 million per year, the deal covers both U.S. and international rights to the long-running animated series. For the first time, South Park will stream on Paramount+ in the United States, something the platform has long lacked despite Paramount owning the IP through Comedy Central. Internationally, the show had recently been pulled from Paramount+ after licensing expired, but the new agreement restores those rights as well. As part of the pact, Parker and Stone have committed to producing at least 10 new episodes per year.
The deal arrives after a messy standoff between the creators and Paramount that played out both behind the scenes and in public. In June, Parker and Stone accused incoming Paramount president Jeff Shell of interfering in their negotiations with Warner Bros. Discovery and Netflix. In a sharply worded letter from their company, Park County, they claimed Shell had encouraged other platforms to alter their terms in ways that favored Paramount, including granting Paramount+ an exclusive 12-month window for new episodes and cutting the length of existing deals.
Tensions escalated further when the Season 27 premiere was delayed by two weeks. Parker and Stone didn’t mince words in a statement posted to South Park’s official account, calling the Paramount and Skydance merger a “shit show” and blaming it for derailing the show’s production schedule. Meanwhile, a previous long-term deal between Paramount and Parker/Stone, reportedly worth $3 billion over 10 years, had been scrapped during the Skydance review process, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
But despite all the chaos, the new deal landed just in time. Season 27 premieres Wednesday, July 23, and the new streaming agreement clears the path for the show’s long-term future on Paramount+. It also opens the door for a renewed overall deal between Parker and Stone and Paramount, extending beyond their current commitment through 2027. Their last major pact, struck in 2021, was valued at $900 million and funded both regular seasons and a series of Paramount+ event specials.
This is a clear strategic win for Paramount+ as it works to expand its adult animation library and compete more aggressively with platforms like Netflix, Disney+, and Max. The HBO Max licensing deal, which previously kept South Park from being a full-time presence on Paramount’s streaming service, expired just last month. Bringing the full series to Paramount+ now gives the company a cornerstone title with global reach and staying power.
Whether this truce between Parker, Stone, and Paramount holds in the long run is unclear. But in the short term, South Park is back, and Paramount just spent $1.5 billion to make sure of it.
