50 Cent has shared his thoughts on Michael Rainey Jr.’s confession that he was blindsided by Power Book II being canceled.
It was announced on Thursday (March 14) that the STARZ series would be coming to an end after the fourth season and will be broken into two parts, premiering on June 7 and September 6, respectively.
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After the news emerged, the show’s lead actor Rainey Jr. (who portrays the character Tariq St. Patrick) revealed he had no idea the series was coming to a close.
“Don’t ask me nothing idk what’s goin on in them offices lmao they trippin,” he told his 3.2 millions followers on his Instagram Stories. “Final season otw tho I guess.”
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He also shared an X post from a staff writer who stated he was shocked by the news after recently receiving praise from those in charge.
“Ain’t hear from STARZ or Lionsgate once about the show trajectory,” the writer said. “Literally sat in their faces last month with a pitch and all I kept hearing is how much they adored the work done on Ghost. Adored it so much that they didn’t bother to tell anybody on staff we got canned.”
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Michael Rainey Jr. added: “My fellow writer said it best. We knew but not the way we should’ve.”
50 Cent came across a TMZ article about Rainey Jr.’s comments and offered a simple explanation for his ignorance.
“Yeah because @michaelraineyjr don’t answer his phone [shrug emoji],” he wrote on Instagram.
50 Cent’s Power sequel and spin-off series Power Book II: Ghost premiered in September 2020 on STARZ, starring the likes of Method Man and Mary J. Blige.
But this week, STARZ CEO Jeffrey Hirsch revealed plans to save money by creating more new shows instead of sustaining the original series.
“You look at the [Power] map and say, ‘Okay, if I take one of those characters out and spin one of those out, I can bring that on to replace the Power show at half the cost,’” he told Deadline.
“Now I’m putting a lot of money right to the bottom line. And I’m really not losing anything in terms of acquisition costs and subscriber viewership, because we know what those demos want. And we know how to line those up.”
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He added: “And so that’s really the core of getting to that 20 percent [margin] — turning that slate over with fresh content to drive the business.”
