Starz may not have the same subscriber numbers as some of the other streaming goliaths like Netflix or Prime Video, but the platform has a generous offering of great movies and TV shows. Every year, Starz continues to build out its library of original movies and shows, but the platform is also home to some of the most popular movies on their way out of theaters. Last year, Starz successfully redeemed the first John Wick spin-off movie, Ballerina, starring Ana de Armas. The film premiered on the platform after grossing only $140 million at the box office against a $90 million budget, but it spent weeks as one of the most-watched titles in the world. The same can be said for Guy Ritchie’s latest box office bomb, In The Grey, which is officially the #1 movie on Starz after failing to reach $30 million at the box office.
Starz has also been one of the more affordable options on the streaming market, which is getting more expensive by the month as platforms continue to raise prices. One way that fans had acquired access to Starz was through subscribing to Fios through Verizon, which included a free membership. However, as of September 30, this offer is no longer available after Starz put out a new statement revealing that negotiations between the platform and Verizon fell through. This is an ongoing dispute, as both sides are blaming the other for access no longer being live. Starz’ official and quite lengthy statement on the ongoing issue reads as follows:
“Despite extensive efforts by STARZ to reach a renewal agreement and preserve uninterrupted access for Verizon Fios customers, Verizon has chosen to remove STARZ. Verizon has mischaracterized our position, shown an unwillingness to negotiate and has been unproductive in progressing towards a mutually beneficial outcome. STARZ is one of the few remaining independent entertainment companies in a marketplace increasingly dominated by large media and telecommunications conglomerates. For decades, we have invested in storytelling that reflects a broad range of voices, experiences and perspectives, while championing creators and audiences that have historically been underrepresented in mainstream entertainment. Verizon’s decision to drop STARZ deprives its customers of access to a unique slate of programming that cannot be found anywhere else and leaves viewers with fewer choices. We stand ready to reach a fair agreement that restores STARZ to Verizon customers as quickly as possible.”
Collider Exclusive · Action Franchise Quiz What Action Series Would You Thrive In? Wick · Fast · Mission · Die Hard
Four franchises. Four completely different ideas of what a hero is: the assassin with a code, the family that never leaves anyone behind, the man who does his own stunts, and the guy who simply refuses to die. Only one of them runs on your particular brand of trouble. Eight questions will tell you which one you would survive.
🐕Wick
🏁Fast
🧨Mission
🎄Die Hard
01
How does a room know you’ve walked into it? Every action hero arrives differently. Some of them arrive before they arrive.
02
It turns physical. What does your fighting actually look like? Choreography is character. Yours says something about you.
03
Who is standing beside you when it starts? Some franchises are built on a team. Others are built on one person walking in alone.
04
It has gone badly wrong. What keeps you upright? Act two exists to find out what you’re actually made of.
05
There’s a vehicle. What are you driving, and how? No action franchise has ever survived without a car chase. This one is yours.
06
How do you feel about the people giving the orders? There is always an institution. There is rarely a good one.
07
Underneath all of it, what are you actually doing this for? The stunts are the reason people come. This is the reason they stay.
08
When the credits roll, what do people say about you? Every franchise is really an argument about what makes someone worth watching.
Casting Has Been Completed Your Franchise Is…
Four action series. One of them is built around exactly the way you
handle pressure, people, and a room that has just gone very quiet. Here is where you would survive
the trilogy, and probably headline it.
John Wick · Chapters 1–4 · 2014–2023
John Wick
You are precision with a grudge. You don’t posture, you don’t
escalate, and you don’t warn anybody twice. That is exactly why the people who know you are
so careful never to be the reason you start.
The Wick films run on discipline: an underworld with actual etiquette, a hero who
honours every rule of it, and a world that unravels the instant someone breaks one
against him.
You share that quality. You are extraordinarily reasonable right up to the line, and
then completely immovable past it.
Focus, commitment and sheer will. You’d be the one carrying grief through three sequels
and turning it into technique rather than noise.
People wouldn’t call you dangerous. They’d say your name quietly and let that do the
work.
The Fast and the Furious · Fast X · 2001–2023
Fast & Furious
You understand the thing the whole franchise is secretly about:
the cars are spectacular, but the crew is the point. You collect people, you keep them, and
you’d drive through a building for any one of them.
This series went from street racing to orbit without ever changing its actual subject,
because loyalty scales and plot doesn’t have to.
You have the same instinct. You build a family out of whoever turns up, and then you
defend it past the point of reason.
You’d thrive here because the franchise rewards exactly your strengths: warmth, nerve,
an absolute refusal to leave anyone behind, and a relaxed relationship with physics.
The mission can wait. The barbecue cannot.
Mission: Impossible · The Final Reckoning · 1996–2025
Mission: Impossible
You over-prepare and then take the dangerous part yourself
anyway. It looks like control, but it’s really responsibility. You have never worked out how
to ask somebody else to carry the risk.
This is the franchise of the plan that collapses on schedule: the team, the mask, the
rooftop, and the one person sprinting flat out because sprinting is all that’s left.
You share that refusal to accept an outcome. Told the odds, you treat them as an
administrative error.
You’d thrive here because these films reward competence and loyalty in equal measure.
The mission matters, but nobody on the team gets left on the wrong side of a door.
Some people delegate the cliff. You have never once been that person.
Die Hard · A Good Day to Die Hard · 1988–2013
Die Hard
You are not the most trained person in the building, the best
equipped, or the one anybody would have picked. You are simply the one still standing at the
end, which turns out to be the only qualification that matters.
Die Hard invented the modern action hero by making him mortal: outgunned, out-planned,
bleeding, and extremely funny about it.
You share that stubbornness. Adversity doesn’t make you noble, it makes you sarcastic,
and then it makes you unstoppable.
You’d thrive here because these films reward improvisation and nerve over preparation,
and you’ve never had the luxury of preparing anyway.
You didn’t want any of this. You just declined to be the person who let it happen.
What Else Is Worth Watching on Starz Right Now?
In The Grey is the most-watched movie on Starz at the moment, but there are other titles that have proven their worth on streaming charts. One of them is Jason Statham’s 2026 action thriller, Shelter, which was another case of Starz redeeming a movie that bombed at the box office. The film has been in the top 10 on Starz for over 130 days. Over on the TV side of things, Starz recently introduced the SWAT reboot series, SWAT Exiles, which is now the #1 most-watched show in the world on the platform. The Outlander spin-off, Blood of my Blood, is also in the Starz TV top 10.
Stay tuned to Collider for more updates and coverage surrounding the ongoing dispute between Verizon and Starz.
Release Date
May 13, 2026
Runtime
98 minutes
Producers
Ivan Atkinson, Dave Caplan, Guy Ritchie, John Friedberg
