The Business

The longest-running original series on Netflix is coming to an end. Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin have played “Grace and Frankie” for seven seasons, telling raunchy and honest stories of older women. After co-creating “Friends,” Marta Kauffman thought up the Netflix hit “Grace and Frankie,” which made it to an unheard-of 94 episodes. While Netflix has been offering a high volume of shows, only to dro...

In 1970, a 21-year-old heir to a margarine fortune became a nationwide sensation when he vowed to give away his money to anyone who needed it. Michael Brody was deluged with thousands of letters, most of which sat unopened for decades, until documentarian Keith Maitland and his team decided to read them. “We started researching people, and we started tracking them down,” Maitland says. “And over a...

Talent agent-turned-producer Theresa Kang Lowe had a pretty good idea of the challenges she’d face in adapting the novel “Pachinko” for television. A series almost entirely subtitled, largely set 100 years ago in Korea, with a huge budget — it wasn’t an obvious greenlight. “At the time when I was an agent and I came across a book, my job was to think about strategy. How are we gonna sell this?” Ka...

“CODA” won three Oscars this year: Best Picture, Best Actor in a Supporting Role, and Writing (Adapted Screenplay). When making “CODA,” Marlee Matlin , who won an Oscar in 1987 for “Children of a Lesser God,” realized she was usually the only Deaf person on a set. She told KCRW in January: “I’m the one typically going to my trailer by myself, and it’s just me and my interpreter. But in all honesty...

Writer Ellen Rapoport’s workplace comedy “Minx,” about a Playgirl-style magazine, was hard to sell. Set in 1972, the series follows an idealistic young Vassar graduate who teams up with with a pornographer to create a magazine featuring feminist articles alongside photos of naked men. With “Bridesmaids” director Paul Feig as a producer, Rapoport was pretty sure the show was a slam dunk. “We took i...

The downfall of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes has inspired books, podcasts, and now the hit limited series “The Dropout.” Showrunner Liz Meriwether (“New Girl”) admits she was surprised when Hulu asked her to pitch her vision for the project. “I was a playwright before I was a screenwriter, and maybe they had some belief in my ability to do something besides write sitcoms. I really don’t know...

Bringing Frank Herbert's sci-fi novel “Dune” to the big screen was considered a daunting proposition. But Mary Parent, a top Legendary Entertainment executive, gave filmmaker Denis Villeneuve the biggest budget of his career to realize his vision. Still, it wasn’t Marvel-sized funding and Villeneuve says he’s actually grateful for that. “It’s good to have restrictions, it brings discipline. And I...

Hollywood has dominated in making global blockbusters for years, whereas China isn’t making those hits yet, but it’s now the biggest generator of box office revenue worldwide. The book “Red Carpet: Hollywood, China and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy” explains that China is playing a long game. Plus, director Jessica Kingdon talks about her Oscar-nominated documentary, “Ascension,” which...

Filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s “Drive My Car” is the first Japanese film to be nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. He’s also the first from his country to be up for Best Director since Akira Kurosawa back in 1986. And for Hamaguchi, the success is a lot.  “I have been working with very small budgets, very small films,” Hamaguchi says through an interpreter. “So to think that my own wo...

Before he even landed the job, director Reinaldo Marcus Green could tell that the film “King Richard” was a special project for the superstar sitting across the table from him – Will Smith. “I could sense that this was a really, really important role for him,and that he was going to give everything to it, and that I was the guy to help him get there.”   Though he had only directed two features bef...

ViacomCBS has rebranded as Paramount, but investors did not respond well. How long will Shari Redstone hang onto control of the company her father built? Plus, there’s chaos at CNN following the ouster of executive Jeff Zucker. A mega-banter with Matt Belloni of Puck News and Lucas Shaw of Bloomberg gets into all the details. Also, who could win the big prize at this year’s Oscar Awards when there...

Kamau Bell talks about his new documentary, “We Need to Talk About Cosby.” Also, the Oscars won’t require COVID vaccinations to attend, and Disney+ boasts a growth in subscribers.

Filmmaking team Phil Lord and Chris Miller have been making movies together for years. “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs,” “21 Jump Street,” and “The Lego Movie” are just some of their many credits. In 2017 they were fired from the Star Wars spinoff movie “Solo,” but bounced back with an Oscar for Best Animated Feature with “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.” And they’re currently working on the...

Oscar-winning actress Marlee Matlin is usually the only Deaf person on a set. Matlin came to a big realization when making “CODA,” a breakthrough film featuring Deaf actors. “I’m the one typically going to my trailer by myself, and it’s just me and my interpreter. But in all honesty, I never thought of it until I got on the set of ‘CODA’ and realized there’s a whole different world out there I’ve...

To get a shot at directing his remake of “A Star is Born,” Bradley Cooper passed on an upfront payday in exchange for a piece of the profit. And that gamble paid off. But as Cooper is painfully aware, the movie business has changed. “Those days are completely gone,” Cooper says. “So, there is trepidation I have with that, no question. And I have thought: I really have to actively start thinking ab...

Multi-hyphenate Bradley Cooper is out with two new films. There’s “Licorice Pizza,” in which he plays real-life wild man producer Jon Peters, and “Nightmare Alley,” where he stars as carnival worker-turned-con man Stanton Carlisle. Cooper commits to all his roles but says it was a challenge to bare all in Guillermo del Toro's dark drama, “Nightmare Alley.” “It demanded that we be naked — emotional...

Iranian director Asghar Farhadi has won two Oscars and could be up for a third. His new movie “A Hero” is on this year’s shortlist for Best International Film. Working in his home country, Farhadi makes compelling cinema despite strict government censorship.

Actress and now director Maggie Gyllenhaal wanted to set her new drama “The Lost Daughter” in Maine, but New Jersey offered a better tax credit. So the plan was to shoot in New Jersey until Gyllenhaal decided it just didn’t feel right. Gyllenhaal tells KCRW about finding her power as a director and how she ended up making “The Lost Daughter” in Greece.

It's time for the 2021 Megabanter! The streaming wars ramped up. Scarlett Johansson sued Disney. And Netflix was the envy of all with “Squid Game.”

Mahershala Ali has worked for 20 years, earning Oscars for “Moonlight” and “Green Book.” But the new drama “Swan Song” is his first leading film role. He’s also a producer on the project, which came naturally since he feels he’s been doing some of that work — without the credit — for years. Ali tells us why “Swan Song” was the right film for him to take on a role behind the camera too.

Documentarian Jonas Poher Rasmussen long wanted to tell the story of his friend, who fled Afghanistan as a child and ended up alone in a Danish town. But that friend didn’t want his identity revealed, and there was no footage of his journey. The answer was animation. Rasmussen’s movie “Flee” is now Denmark’s Oscar submission for Best International Film. 

KCRW resumes its conversation with James Andrew Miller, author of “Tinderbox,” the new book about HBO. He talks about more recent HBO history, including the 2020 launch of Warner Media’s streaming service. When asked whether he thought naming the streamer HBO Max was a good or bad idea, Miller responded, “I think it’s one of the great branding disasters of all time.”

For his exhaustive new book on HBO, James Andrew Miller talked to 600 people about the network that brought us “The Sopranos,” “The Wire” and “Veep.” Behind the scenes, executives were playing their own “Game of Thrones.” In the first of a two-part conversation, Miller tells KCRW about his new HBO oral history, “Tinderbox: HBO’s Ruthless Pursuit of New Frontiers.”

The new Netflix documentary “Procession” follows Dan Laurine and five other victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests, as they use drama to ease the burden of their traumatic childhoods. They write and re-enact scenes from their past — scenes that are not at all graphic but still carry a powerful emotional charge. Laurine and “Procession” director Robert Greene tell KCRW how they hope their film...

Kieran Culkin has found a defining role playing Roman Roy, the snarkiest of the siblings on HBO’s “Succession.” Culkin tells KCRW about acting from an early age, facing his fears while fulfilling a dream as host of “Saturday Night Live,” and how he sometimes finds it hard to turn off that very snarky Roman Roy persona.