00:00Today on Forbes, South Park's creators are now billionaires.
00:05If you piss off South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, they will make you pay, both financially and satirically.
00:14On July 2nd, after Comedy Central delayed the season 27 premiere of the show because Paramount, the network's parent company, was locked in a tense negotiation for its streaming rights, in the midst of a months-long acquisition of Paramount by David Ellison's Skydance Media, Parker and Stone issued a statement on X.com and let it rip, with the duo writing, quote,
00:37This merger is a shit show, and it's effing up South Park. They used the actual expletive.
00:44Both transactions were resolved last week, as Parker and Stone agreed last Monday to a five-year, $1.5 billion streaming deal that will bring South Park to Paramount Plus globally.
00:56And last Thursday, the FCC officially approved the Skydance acquisition.
01:00The deal cements the duo's place as the highest-paid TV showrunners in Hollywood and made the 55-year-old Parker and the 54-year-old Stone billionaires, worth an estimated $1.2 billion each.
01:15But the new agreement, which will pay the pair at least $250 million per year, didn't end Paramount's headaches.
01:22In South Park's season premiere, which aired last Wednesday, Donald Trump is depicted in bed with Satan, and Jesus is seen warning the show's young protagonists about the dangers of provoking him.
01:34The Jesus character says, quote,
01:35The comedically fearless Parker and Stone now enter television's rare billionaire creative class, joining Oprah Winfrey, Tyler Perry, Dick Wolf, and Jerry Seinfeld in the Three Comma Club.
01:57That astonishing amount of money is a testament to the enduring popularity of South Park, which has been a massive cultural phenomenon since its debut on Comedy Central in 1997,
02:08becoming, in just its second season, the highest-rated non-sports program in basic cable history, with nearly 6 million viewers.
02:15Over the years, it became indispensable to Comedy Central, and its 300-plus episodes have now become bulk inventory that re-air dozens of times per week.
02:26Parker and Stone's real coup came in 2007, when the creators and their lawyer and business partner, Kevin Morris,
02:33struck a deal with the network to play South Park episodes online using a rudimentary flash video player, agreeing to split the then-non-existent digital revenues 50-50 in perpetuity.
02:45Then came the streaming revolution.
02:47Hulu licensed the show's streaming rights in 2014 for $87.5 million and re-upping for $110 million through 2019.
02:56HBO Max then won a bidding war over Peacock, Netflix, and others to become South Park's exclusive domestic streaming home for $550 million over five years.
03:07That deal expired in June.
03:10Instead of just pocketing their half of the HBO deal, in 2021, Parker and Stone negotiated for a new arrangement with Paramount, which owns Comedy Central,
03:19for a guaranteed $155 million a year in exchange for creating new episodes of the show, and their portion of the streaming revenue.
03:28Last week's agreement renegotiated the terms of that deal, upping the annual payout to $250 million.
03:36Parker and Stone pour that wealth into Park County, not only the location of South Park's fictional town, but also the name of their production studio,
03:44which is owned almost entirely by the pair.
03:46Founded in 2012, they route all income from their TV show, movie projects, and stage productions of The Book of Mormon, which they co-wrote,
03:55through the company, taking only an estimated $10 million per year in salary.
04:00It's a common corporate structure among Hollywood's top earners, but unlike other companies,
04:05such as Reese Witherspoon's Hello Sunshine or Brad Pitt's Plan B Entertainment,
04:10Park County has never taken on equity partners or investors.
04:13Instead, in 2012, Parker and Stone leveraged the existing and projected future income generated by South Park and other projects
04:21to score $60 million in convertible debt funding from media-focused merchant bank, The Rain Group.
04:28As long as they paid off the loan on time, they would keep all of the equity.
04:34The bet on themselves paid off as the streaming dollars began to flow in,
04:38and in 2016, Parker and Stone bought out Rain, maintaining full ownership ever since.
04:45For full coverage, check out Matt Craig's piece on Forbes.com.
04:50This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes, thanks for tuning in.
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