It’s been about 18 months since Lionsgate began taking steps to separate its film and TV studio business from Starz — a process Starz president and CEO Jeffrey Hirsch likens to renovating a house.

“During the process, it’s painstaking — but once you’re in the house, you forget the process because you’re enjoying it,” Hirsch told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview Wednesday. Starz is at the “in the house” point now, as the streaming and premium cable outlet formally split from Lionsgate and began trading as a standalone company on the Nasdaq exchange.

Hirsch joined Starz in July 2015, about a year and a half before Lionsgate acquired it, and has been president and CEO since 2019. He noted that under Lionsgate, “there were multiple different segments [of the business], and so things were done — rightly so — for the overall growth of the company.” Now that Starz is on its own, he hopes...