Netflix Licenses Power Franchise From Lionsgate in Global Pact

Netflix has licensed the first four series of the Power universe from Lionsgate Television in a multiyear agreement that puts one of premium cable's most durable crime franchises in front of a global audience for the first time, according to Deadline, which reported the deal on July 27. Beginning in November, Power, Power Book II: Ghost, Power Book III: Raising Kanan and Power Book IV: Force will roll out on Netflix in international markets, while the flagship Power series will also stream on Netflix in the United States.

For Starz, the franchise's original home, the arrangement is a calculated wager that reach now matters more than exclusivity. For Netflix, it extends a licensing playbook that has repeatedly turned other networks' back catalogs into chart-topping engagement. And for Lionsgate, still the subject of persistent takeover chatter, it converts a mature library asset into fresh revenue at a moment when investors are scrutinizing every part of the company.

Terms Divide the Map Between Two Streamers

Details reported by Deadline and TheWrap sketch a carefully partitioned deal. Netflix takes non-exclusive international rights to all four series, excluding the United States and Canada, with rollout timing varying by market depending on Lionsgate's existing local output arrangements. In the US, Netflix gains rights only to the original Power, and even there Starz keeps the series on its own platform, meaning American viewers will find the show in both places from November.

Starz remains the exclusive US streaming home for the three spinoffs. The package covers six seasons of Power, four of Ghost, five of Raising Kanan and three of Force, a library of more than 200 episodes produced across a decade. Financial terms were not disclosed by either company.

Flagship Series Ends a Long Run on Hulu

One quiet casualty of the agreement is Hulu. The original Power, all 63 episodes, has streamed there under license since 2017, and What's on Netflix reported that the arrangement ends when the series jumps to Netflix in November. That shift says something about how the market now values the show: a decade-old drama that still commands enough audience for Netflix to buy it away from a rival platform is precisely the kind of asset the industry's licensing revival has taught studios to reprice.

Power launched on Starz in June 2014, created by Courtney A. Kemp with Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson as executive producer, and grew into the network's defining franchise. Kemp continues to executive produce through her End of Episode banner, alongside Jackson's G-Unit Film and Television and Mark Canton's Canton Entertainment.

Jackson's Long and Combative History With the Network

No account of the franchise's economics is complete without its most visible producer. Jackson signed what Variety described in 2018 as a massive multi-series overall deal with Starz, an arrangement widely reported to be worth as much as 150 million dollars, and used it to spin the original series into the Book universe that now spans more than 200 episodes. Relations frayed publicly in the years that followed: the Hollywood Reporter chronicled Jackson's open criticism of the network and threats to walk, and Deadline reported in September 2022 that he and Starz had parted ways when the deal expired, with his G-Unit banner shopping projects elsewhere.

Jackson nonetheless remains an executive producer across the franchise, which means the Netflix rollout extends the global footprint of his most valuable piece of intellectual property regardless of where his overall deal sits. For a producer who has spent years arguing that the network undervalued and undermarketed the franchise, distribution on the largest streaming service on earth amounts to a form of vindication, delivered by the studio rather than the network he feuded with.

Starz Trades Exclusivity for a Bigger Funnel

Starz has been navigating life as a standalone company since Lionsgate completed the separation of its studio and networks businesses in May 2025. Independence has been bumpy: in its second earnings report as a public company, Starz posted a 42.2 million dollar loss and a decline of 520,000 subscribers to 19.1 million, according to coverage of the results. Analysts at Parrot Analytics have framed the company's central strategic question bluntly: hold its biggest franchises exclusive to prop up its own service, or license them broadly and take the money along with the marketing halo.

This deal answers that question, at least for the Power universe. Keeping the spinoffs exclusive domestically preserves the subscription case for US customers, while international licensing turns markets Starz was never going to win on its own into a promotional engine. Every viewer who discovers Raising Kanan on Netflix in London or Lagos becomes a potential customer for the franchise's next chapters, which will not be on Netflix.

Licensing also fits the pattern of how the two former corporate siblings have restructured their relationship since the split. Variety reported that Starz and Lionsgate extended their theatrical output arrangement even as they prepared to separate, keeping roughly 20 Lionsgate film titles a year flowing to the network's platform in the first pay window. Content, in other words, still binds the companies contractually even though the equity tie has been severed, and the Power pact adds television's most valuable shared asset to that web of agreements.

Netflix Doubles Down on Other Studios' Hits

Netflix has spent the past three years demonstrating that licensed library content can outperform expensive originals, a lesson crystallized by the Suits phenomenon and reinforced by subsequent acquisitions from legacy media companies eager for cash. Crime franchises with deep episode counts and loyal followings are the ideal shape for that strategy: long runtimes drive engagement hours, and completed seasons carry no production risk.

Scale is the other half of the calculation. Netflix crossed 300 million subscribers before it stopped reporting the figure in 2025, and its recommendation engine has proven unusually effective at reviving dramas that plateaued on smaller platforms. Power arrives with a large, underexploited international audience: the franchise's core themes and Jackson's global celebrity travel well, but Starz's own app operates in only a fraction of the territories this deal covers. If the pattern of previous library migrations holds, the franchise could reach more households in its first international quarter on Netflix than it did in years of piecemeal territorial distribution.

Notably, Netflix accepted non-exclusive terms across the package. That flexibility has become a signature of its recent licensing, and it lowers the price of reach: Netflix does not need to own the Power franchise everywhere, it needs the shows on the home screen of markets where crime drama travels well. Lionsgate, in turn, keeps the option of stacking additional buyers in the same territories.

Takeover Chatter Keeps Lionsgate in the Frame

Context around the seller adds intrigue. Lionsgate spent June and July at the center of consolidation speculation, with Deadline reporting that Netflix took the unusual step of stating it was not pursuing an acquisition of the studio. Mid-July trading saw Lionsgate shares jump on renewed takeover rumors, according to market coverage. Against that backdrop, a licensing pact between the two companies will be read by some investors as evidence of deepening commercial ties, though nothing in the reported terms suggests anything beyond an ordinary content transaction.

For a studio whose value rests substantially on its film and television library, demonstrating that flagship franchises can still command global licensing demand is its own form of investor relations. Deals like this one put a public price signal, even an undisclosed one, on the catalog any acquirer would be buying.

Franchise Pipeline Stays Off the Table

Just as significant is what Netflix did not get. The two upcoming series in the universe, Power: Origins, currently in production with Spence Moore II and Charlie Mann playing younger versions of the original leads, and Power: Legacy, which brings back Joseph Sikora and Michael Rainey Jr. in a present-day story, are excluded from the deal, per Deadline. Legacy is also structured differently behind the camera, as a co-production between Starz and Lionsgate Television, reflecting the newly independent network's push to own more of its scripted slate.

Sequencing matters here too. Origins, a prequel following younger versions of James St. Patrick and Tommy Egan, and Legacy, which advances the timeline, both arrive after international audiences will have had months to work through the back catalog on Netflix. Starz is effectively letting a rival platform run its global marketing campaign, then harvesting the demand on services and channels it controls. It is the same window logic studios once applied between theaters and home video, rebuilt for the streaming era.

That exclusion is the tell for the whole strategy. Starz is using Netflix as a global top-of-funnel for the Power franchise's past while reserving its future for itself. If international audiences binge a decade of Ghost, Tommy and Kanan on Netflix this winter and then want to know what happens next, there will be exactly one place to find out. Whether enough of them follow the story home will decide if licensing the crown jewels was shrewd portfolio management or the first step in giving the franchise away.