Here’s How ‘South Park’s New $1.5 Billion Deal With Paramount Will Answer Fans’ Prayers

After a month straight of public embarrassment and legal threats, Paramount Global has reportedly secured a streaming deal worth $1.5 billion with star South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone that will give fans what they’ve been begging for since the beginning of the current contract: more South Park.

Back in June, when Paramount first attempted to negotiate an extension to the current South Park overall contract pending its expiration in 2027, the company gave Parker and Stone a lowball offer that compelled the duo to seek out other streaming homes for their flagship series. Paramount, which is in the middle of a highly publicized and politicized acquisition deal with David Ellison’s company Skydance Media, could only make Parker and Stone an offer on which Ellison and Skydance signed off, and its soon-to-be parent company balked at the hefty 10-year, $3-billion price tag that Parker and Stone reportedly put on the rights to the South Park back catalog and a new, measly six-episode season on a semi-yearly basis.

Over the following weeks, Parker and Stone would publicly slam Paramount for impropriety and for meddling in their negotiations with other streamers, but, according to insiders who spoke to The Los Angeles Times, Paramount is now prepared to finalize a five-year, $1.5 billion, Ellison-approved deal with Parker and Stone just for the South Park streaming rights on Paramount+, the terms of which would require Parker and Stone to up their creative output to 10 new South Park episodes per season.

It’s enough to make us get on our knees and praise Jesus, baby.

Critically, this pending deal between Paramount and Parker and Stone’s production company, Park County, only secures Paramount’s right to stream the current South Park back catalog on Paramount+. The parties will have to negotiate a separate contract for Park County to produce future seasons of South Park, which will raise the annual total South Park fee far past Parker and Stone’s original $300 million per year asking price for an overall contract.

However, the fact that Parker and Stone are already willing to agree to ten-episode seasons for future South Park content will satisfy a gripe that South Park fans have had since the current contract instituted six-episode, two-specials-per-year seasons with frustratingly infrequent release schedules. The Paramount+-exclusive specials have varied wildly in quality, and fans miss the time when weekly South Park episodes were more like a Country Kitchen buffet and less like manna in the desert.

Of course, more isn’t always better, and, while 10 episodes of television per year doesn’t sound like an overwhelming workload, in their advanced years, Parker and Stone may yet struggle to deliver quality along with the increased quantity. Back in September, the duo spoke to Vanity Fair about their unpopular South Park work schedule, and they compared themselves to aging rockstars trying to stay on tour so many decades after their peaks. “We’re the Rolling Stones, man—we’re trying to get out five, six nights a year,” Stone said at the time. “We could do more, but I don’t think it’d be better.”

But, hey, maybe South Park is less like classic rock and more like the Christian kind – it doesn’t need to be good for us to buy their crap religiously.