Courtney Kemp’s New Showrunner Math: Budget, Franchise, Repeat
The star producer breaks down how the TV market shifted as she went from Starz juggernaut ‘Power’ to Netflix’s ‘Nemesis’
I wrote about the open letter opposing the Para-WBD merger fraying Hollywood relationships, reported on how A24 is reshaping TV and dug into what’s taking Peter Friedlander so long to set TV strategy at Amazon. I’m lesley.goldberg@theankler.com
Even a proven hitmaker like Courtney Kemp is pitching shows differently now.
When the creator of Power — the Starz hit she built with Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson that became one of the most successful cable franchises of the past decade — takes a new series to market, the first question isn’t just whether the idea works. It’s how much it costs, whether it can scale and if it can turn into something bigger.
In other words: budget, franchise, repeat.
More than a decade after Power proved that shows made by and for underrepresented audiences can deliver both cultural impact and real revenue, Kemp is back with Nemesis, a gritty L.A.-set crime drama she hopes can hit on a larger, global platform. But the way she got there reflects a broader shift across Hollywood — one where even established creators are adapting to a tighter, more cost-conscious market.
“It didn’t used to be that way,” Kemp tells me in her first interview before the show’s May 14 launch. “It used to be, ‘I can tell this story. Do you guys want this story?’ Now it’s, ‘How much will it cost to tell that story? And can you do it?’”
After seven years building the Power universe — a franchise that generated more than 1.6 billion global streaming hours and helped anchor the platform’s digital business — she left in 2021 for Netflix. But the path to Nemesis wasn’t immediate.
She spent the first few years prepping a crime drama that reunited her with The Good Wife’s Julianna Margulies (Kemp earlier had worked on the CBS legal drama). But amid Kemp’s grief over the brother she lost in 2021, she couldn’t lean in fully to the show she envisioned. “It was not the gourmet cheeseburger,” Kemp tells me of the show that wasn’t (referencing Netflix’s taste for elevated but broad swings). “It was a little too esoteric. I was writing about what I was going through, not about what I’m good at writing about.”
Another complication: The broader environment was cooling to the post-2020 push for more inclusive storytelling, even as the audiences for those stories remained.
“Black people aren’t going away. Women aren’t going away. Queer folks aren’t going away. No one’s going away. We’re still here, and we still need content, and our dollars still count,” says Kemp, who turns 49 on May 4. “So, people are still going to make things. Now, is it going to get harder? Yes. Is less of the budget going to go to that? Yes, I think that’s true. Overall, we’re going to find more of us competing for the same spots.”
Nemesis, filmed and set in L.A., stars Matthew Law as a hero cop and Y’lan Noel as the criminal who has evaded him for years. It’s equal parts heist caper and marriage drama with a hefty dose of action and adrenaline that Kemp hopes will resonate with Netflix’s global audience.
Kemp has learned a lot about her own personal strengths and weaknesses over the past four years. Speaking from her home in L.A., where she lives with her son and fiancé, Tani Marole — who’s also her co-creator on Nemesis — she lays out a master class’ worth of knowledge she’s gleaned about the industry and more specifically, Netflix.
Today, she reveals:
What Netflix actually means when it asks creators to “restate the premise”
Why selling a show now starts with proving the budget — not just the idea
What she learned from the Netflix project that didn’t work — and why this one did
How Kemp approaches every project as a potential franchise from day one
Why she fought to shoot Nemesis in L.A., and what she gave up to do it
How global streamers balance specific storytelling with broad appeal
The “rollercoaster” that has been Hollywood’s approach to marginalized communities
How she defined and nurtured her showrunner brand, and her advice for other writers
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