Starz has locked in 15 August 2025 for the launch of Magic City: An American Fantasy, a five-part documentary that traces Atlanta’s storied strip club from a local attraction to a cultural powerbroker connected to chart-topping hits and political campaigns.
Created by journalist-author Cole Brown and directed by filmmaker Charles Todd, the series arrives with an executive-producer slate that includes Drake’s DreamCrew Entertainment, Jermaine Dupri, and Atlanta Hawks co-owner Jami Gertz. Episodes stream Fridays on the Starz app and air at 10 p.m. ET/PT immediately after the BMF season finale, with linear and streaming rollouts synchronized in the United States and Canada.
Starz president of original programming Kathryn Busby calls the project a “riveting behind-the-curtain look at one of the most distinctive places in Black culture,” emphasizing the access granted by founder Michael “Mr. Magic” Barney and the dancers who built the club’s reputation.
Barney opened Magic City in 1985, and the venue soon gained a reputation for breaking new hip-hop records and nurturing artists who would dominate Atlanta’s music scene. The series features first-hand accounts from 2 Chainz, Big Boi, Nelly, Quavo, Killer Mike, and Shaquille O’Neal, lending insight into how a single stage reshaped careers, radio playlists, and even civic engagement initiatives like Stacey Abrams’s 2020 voter-registration push.
Dupri, who has long treated the club as a creative laboratory, said the documentary finally tells a story “everybody in Atlanta already knows by heart but the world still needs to hear”. Production wrapped in 2023 and an early cut drew a capacity crowd at the 2024 SXSW Film & TV Festival, setting the stage for Starz’s pickup in March and the teaser drop on 9 June 2025.
Beyond celebrity anecdotes, the filmmakers trace the club’s ties to Black entrepreneurship, nightlife economics, and the criminal undercurrents that once swirled around B.M.F., balancing archival footage with new interviews to place Magic City’s neon-lit mythology under documentary scrutiny
