STARZ on Friday announced the slate of movies and television titles arriving on the service in June 2026, led by the return of Power Book III: Raising Kanan for its fifth and final season and the premiere of a new drama, The Listeners.
Byron Allen, who this month finalized a deal giving him a 52 percent majority stake in BuzzFeed and control of HuffPost, has also emerged inside the story: days after that deal he said he bought an 11 percent stake in Starz from Steve Mnuchin and declared, "I want to control Starz."
The programming roll call is precise. Power Book III: Raising Kanan returns in June with new episodes available to stream in the United States weekly on Fridays only on the STARZ app and all STARZ streaming and on-demand platforms. Amadeus, a limited series, will reach its finale on Friday, June 5, 2026, with new episodes available to stream in the U.S. only on the STARZ app and all STARZ streaming and on-demand platforms.
STARZ also said new episodes of The Listeners will air throughout June 2026 and that Dreams, which stars Jessica Chastain, will air exclusively on the STARZ app and all STARZ streaming and on-demand platforms. Two theatrical sequels — The Strangers: Chapter 3 and I Can Only Imagine 2 — are scheduled to premiere exclusively on STARZ, though the network has not yet provided exact premiere dates; I Can Only Imagine 2 features Milo Ventimiglia and Sophie Skelton.
The numbers add immediate weight to Allen’s stakes in the conversation. He reportedly spent $25 million to acquire the 11 percent position from Mnuchin, a move he announced publicly while laying out a strategy that explicitly references the streaming era: "SVOD, subscription video on-demand, and AVOD, advertising video-on-demand," he said, and described his approach as "A left hook and a right hook."
Allen has been blunt about business priorities. He praised the appeal of cheap or free access in the market, saying, "The world’s two favorite words right now: ‘Free’ and ‘streaming,’" and criticized big spending on certain television dayparts: "They’re wasting enormous sums of money trying to win that daypart." He also recounted pitching programming and scheduling ideas with cost-savings, telling an audience, "I said, ‘Let me put that show there and let me buy the time period. I can save you $30 million-$40 million.’ They said, ‘Brilliant idea, let’s do it.’" He has described the path to deals as an often-rejected slog — "50,000 no’s."
Context matters: this is not a takeover in paperwork. The verified timeline shows Allen’s BuzzFeed majority came earlier this month; days later he disclosed the Starz stake and the public ambition to expand his influence. The June content list gives any shareholder or would-be influencer an immediate lever: exclusive titles and app-only windows concentrate where viewers will log in, and the schedules and platform choices the company makes now will shape subscriber habits.
The tension is plain. An 11 percent stake is significant enough to get attention and a public platform, but it is far short of control. Allen’s declaration, "I want to control Starz," collides with the simple arithmetic of ownership — and with the fact that the company can still decide programming and distribution strategy without him. Yet his public argument for blending SVOD and AVOD, and his willingness to spend to secure windows and time periods, raises a question the company’s board cannot ignore.
What happens next is predictable and consequential: Allen will use headline programming and exclusives — the very items STARZ just disclosed for June 2026 — as proof points in any push to alter strategy. Given his recent purchases and his public comments, he is unlikely to be a passive minority investor. The most likely outcome is not immediate control, but pressure on Starz leadership to adopt combinations of free and paid streaming tactics that reflect Allen’s stated playbook.
