The Business

India's Reliance Big just made a major investment in Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks. Has another sucker landed on our shores, or has Hollywood finally met its match? And while India is coming to Hollywood, one Hollywood production went to India –  tales from Bombay with the producers of Bollywood Hero.

Documentaries used to be relegated to PBS and college classrooms, but these days, they're just as liable to come to theater near you.  We talk to Sheila Nevins, who's had a big part in growing of the nonfiction business as head of HBO Docs for the past three decades. Plus, we revisit our session with Hollywood therapist Dennis Palumbo.

This week, we look at the arcane, historical, fantastical and off-color jargon of the movie set.  Plus, when good executives recut bad films...inside the mind of a cinematic scissorhands. 

This week, The Business goes to "The Con," the annual nerd-fest know as Comic-Con that’s become a major marketing stop for Hollywood.  Plus, a new documentary looks at Ozploitation...

Twilight gave a faltering new movie studio an extreme makeover. We talk with Rob Friedman, the chief of Summit Entertainment.

From Michigan to New Mexico, the production tax incentives derby is on in a big, big way.  We talk to one of the producers of Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino, which moved from Minnesota to Michigan because of incentives, and two state legislators on opposite sides of the incentives debate.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has inducted 134 new members. We talk to one of funniest, actress Jane Lynch.

Paramount shuffles its top executives and Universal may be next. Sony cancels a high-profile project just before cameras roll and Fox balks at the budget of their new Denzel Washington thriller.  What the hell’s happening to the movie business?

In a surprise move, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that next year there will be ten Best Picture Oscar nominees, instead of five.  AMPAS President Sid Ganis explains why.  Kind of.  Plus, producers stand up and say, "I am somebody!" at their guild's new Produced By conference. We speak with motion picture and TV producer and guild president Marshall Herskovitz.

Even in the age of Obama, black writers in Hollywood find there's no such as thing as post-racial, and a new Writers' Guild report concurs.