“South Park” is moving its streaming home from Hulu to HBO Max.
The announcement was made Tuesday during WarnerMedia’s investor day to preview the service.
The longrunning animated comedy garnered between $450-$500 million for rights to its past episodes, which TheWrap previously reported. “South Park,” from creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, is currently in its 23rd season. It was renewed through Season 26 last month.
Hulu has held streaming rights, which include availability of new episodes one day after their Comedy Central premiere, since 2015.
Prior to Hulu, “South Park” streamed on Netflix. HBO Max’s rights include the same next-day rights that Hulu had. All 23 seasons will become available in June. HBO Max will launch in May of 2020.
“‘South Park’ is unequivocally among the best–setting the satirical gold standard, with a consistent finger on the comedy pulse,” said Kevin Reilly, chief content officer, HBO Max and president, TBS, TNT, and truTV. “Audiences have connected with Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny – either alive or dead – for over 20 years, and we look forward to connecting these characters to new audiences on HBO Max.”
“South Park” becomes the latest series to garner a huge amount of cash from streaming services, following the likes of former sitcoms “Friends,” “Seinfeld,” “The Office” and “The Big Bang Theory.” Earlier this week, WarnerMedia said that “The West Wing” would move from Netflix to HBO Max.
Unlike those others, “South Park” is still producing new episodes and will do so for the foreseeable future.
In the next six months Disney, Apple, WarnerMedia and NBCUniversal will all launch their own streaming services to compete with Netflix and others including Hulu and Amazon. Netflix, which paid more than $500 to pry “Seinfeld” from Hulu, is seeing its own content library raided with NBCU pulling “The Office” and WarnerMedia taking back “Friends” for their own streaming offerings.