Looks like playing Jeopardy! Isn’t a gamble for everyone. Deadline reports that days after Sony snagged back the distribution rights to the Ken Jennings-hosted game show and Wheel of Fortune, a California appeals court today handed those rights back to CBS.
It’s unclear how long CBS will have those rights. “The superior court’s order of April 10, 2025 denying the preliminary injunction and allowing Respondents to begin ‘distributing the shows and need not deliver episodes to CBS’ is stayed pending further order of this court,” a three-judge panel from the Second Appellate District ordered.
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Sony has until April 28 to respond. CBS can give its reply by May 9. Any new deals and platforms that Sony was hoping for the game shows are at a standstill until the case is closed. Neither Sony nor CBS had any immediate comment to media outlets.
Sony and CBS have been in breach-of-contract dispute since October 31 over CBS’ more than 40-year-old distribution contract and claims by Sony Pictures TV of CBS licensing the shows. Agreements for the Merv Griffin shows have been in place since 1982 and under the respective umbrellas of CBS and Sony since the late 1990s.
Sony Pictures owns both game shows outright through the company’s acquisition of Merv Griffin Entertainment in 1986. Merv Griffin, who created both shows, signed a perpetual distribution agreement with King World Productions in the mid-1980s. The deal came when he relaunched the shows. Sony controls the production, while CBS handles sales and distribution of the episodes to the 150-plus TV stations that carry the shows.
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