50 Cent is NOT happy with the way Starz is handling his critically acclaimed show Power, and he is threatening to leave and/or take the series elsewhere if network execs don’t get their act together soon.
Following Sunday night’s explosive episode, in which two major characters were killed—Jukebox (Anika Noni Rose) and Julio (J.R. Ramirez)—Fiddy, who executive produces the series and also stars as the villainous character Kanan, posted on Instagram, saying he “feels a little different” about the show.
“If the biggest show on your net work doesn’t mean anything, what does your network mean STARZ?” he wrote. “I’m taking my talents to south beach fuck this.”
Though Power, currently in its fourth season, is one of the highest-rated series on Starz, the network did not grant showrunner Courtney Kemp Agboh’s request to extend the series to 12 episodes over the usual 10 they’ve been ordering since the first season, which meant some storylines had to cut, and it also explains why Sunday night’s episode (Episode 6) seemed like it moved so fast with multiple character deaths.
She explained to Entertainment Weekly in a recent interview:
“We only have 10 episodes, so we’re often in a situation where we have to pack in a lot of story because we want to get certain places by the end of the season. In the case of episode six, it was originally conceived of as a Tommy only episode.
“We were going to do two separate episodes: One was going to be Ghost, Kanan, Tariq, Jukebox, and the kidnapping; and one was going to be just Tommy on his journey to Chicago and what happens there.
“Unfortunately, Starz would not give us the extra episode. I asked them for 12 episodes for season 4 and they would not do it. So because they would not do it, we had to make it one episode… The upshot was that we had to lose some story lines and some story.”
This isn’t the first time 50 Cent (real name: Curtis Jackson) has threatened to leave Power. Last December, he went off on the Hollywood Foreign Press Association via Instagram for snubbing Power, which has yet to receive any Golden Globe nominations or any other awards show nods for that matter.
