The Business

The Mouse swallows the Fox, Netflix keeps turning into the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, but are its rivals figuring out how to cross the streams? Old tweets cause new trouble, and a king of Hollywood falls from his throne. Banter buddies Matt Belloni and Lesley Goldberg join Kim Masters for a 2018 mega banter.

Peter Jackson generated whole worlds for his ‘Lord of the Rings’ and ‘Hobbit’ trilogies. His latest project? A documentary that magically brings to life old footage shot on the front lines of World War One. The restoration of 100-year-old film was no easy feat. He tells us about his newest film, ‘They Shall Not Grow Old.’

In 2015, actor Kristoffer Polaha booked what he thought would be a one-off gig in a Hallmark TV movie. Now, he’s got 5 Hallmark films under his belt. He tells us how he and the Hallmark Channel fell in love. Then, KCRW's Matt Holzman sits down with Netflix's Lisa Nishimura. The head of original documentaries and comedy programming for the streamer tells us how she decides what will become a Netflix original.

For his Netflix kids show ‘Beat Bugs’, Josh Wakely worked a miracle: he got the rights to use Beatles music in the series. Never afraid of going big, Wakely now has a new animated show on Netflix called ‘Motown Magic,’ which features another set of iconic songs and Smokey Robinson as the music supervisor. Wakely tells us about his years-long pursuit of the rights to some of the world’s most famous music.

Sometimes our guests have so much good stuff to say that we can’t fit it all into one show. So let out your belt a notch. This week we’re bringing you delicious leftovers from Ethan Hawke, George Tillman Jr., Kathy Griffin, and Aneesh Chaganty and John Cho. Plus, some early Oscar forecasting.

In his career as a documentary filmmaker, Matthew Heineman has criss-crossed the country, followed Syrian activists in exile and embedded with vigilantes fighting Mexican drug cartels. His newest film, ‘A Private War’ is an adventure of a different kind--a narrative feature about war correspondent Marie Colvin. He tells us about using techniques he learned doing documentaries to make his first narrative film.

This week, while Kim Masters is out of town, we’re sharing an episode of the KCRW podcast, The Document. Our colleague Matt Holzman talks to married filmmaking couple Jimmy Chin and Chai Vasarhelyi about why and how they made their dizzying new film, ‘Free Solo.’

When he was just starting his career, ‘Indiana Jones’ and ‘Jurassic Park’ producer Frank Marshall got a job with Orson Welles on what would be the legendary director’s last film. It was still unfinished when Welles died in 1985, but Marshall was determined to see the job through. He and fellow producer Filip Rymsza tells us about the decades-long quest to finish ‘The Other Side of the Wind.’

When comedian Kathy Griffin posed for a photo holding what appeared to be the blood-covered head of Donald Trump, she became a pariah overnight. So she did the only thing she could do to keep her career alive: turned her story into an act, and took it around the world.

Director George Tillman Jr. felt called to make ‘The Hate U Give’--about a black teen who divides her time between her mostly white high school and her mostly black neighborhood. He wasn’t daunted by the fact that the film was based on a novel for young adults. He tells us how made sure his movie avoided YA cliches and reflects on his career--from directing 'Soul Food' to producing the 'Barbershop' movies.