Starz underwent a round of layoffs Friday, with the cuts impacting 7% of its workforce, TheWrap has learned.
Coming 10 months after Starz officially separated from Lionsgate into two standalone, publicly-traded companies in May 2025, the cuts represent a shifting of the companies’ organizational structure as it prepares to scale its business towards future growth, an individual with knowledge of the cuts told TheWrap.
During its most recent earnings report, Starz added 170,000 U.S. subscribers in its fiscal fourth quarter for a total of 17.6 million, driven by interest in scripted originals including “Power Book IV: Force” Season 3 and “Spartacus: House of Ashur.”
“The success of our originals proves that our bedrock strategy is working. We deliver edgy, premium content for women and underrepresented audiences that broad-based streamers don’t address,” Starz CEO Jeff Hirsch told analysts during the earnings call in late February. “Content remains core to everything we do, and as we look at the rest of 2026, it’s clear we have one of our most compelling lineups of originals.”
For the quarter overall, the company narrowed its net loss of $20.7 million despite total revenue falling 5.6% year over year to $322.8 million during its fourth quarter. On the streaming side, Starz added 370,000 over-the-top subscribers in the U.S. for a total of 12.7 million, but on linear, the TV business shed 200,000 subscribers for a total of 5 million.
The company has embraced AI as a means to cut costs, including for some scenes on “Spartacus: House of Ashur,” or elsewhere for internal training and to profitability and efficiencies.
“I do believe it will be an additional tool for the industry. This is still more art than it is science, and I think the creative process will continue to be that way, and and we’re excited to use it as a tool,” Hirsch said of AI during the earnings call. “But I think the business has really grown on the success of the uniqueness of our originals. I think that’s hard to replicate, and so we’re excited about that.”
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