The Business

After AMC acquired the rights to Anne Rice’s major literary works in 2020, the network tasked producer Mark Johnson (“Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul”) to oversee its ambitious new project of making shows out of the author’s 18 supernatural novels. First is “ Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire ” on AMC+, telling the love story of two vampires, Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson) and Le...

Steven Levitan was still working on his ABC’s hit-show “Modern Family'' when the network decided to revive the sitcom “ Roseanne ” after a 20-year hiatus. But after finishing its 10th season, the show was canceled under a cloud of internal rift between cast members and turmoil with ABC executives. That incident made Levitan reflect on the industry. “It made me think about what an interesting situa...

Mike Rinder spent most of his life as a member of the Church of Scientology International. He joined as a child, and by the age of 18, he signed the organization's Sea Org contract, pledging loyalty and allegiance to the church, while committing all of his future lifetimes to it as well. But after years of emotional and physical abuse, he left the organization in 2007. “I didn't make it all the wa...

Comedy is not exactly in vogue among big studios, so when filmmakers Judd Apatow and Nicholas Stoller approached actor Billy Eichner about making ‘Bros,’ the first big-studio, big-screen LGBTQ+ rom-com for Universal Pictures, he was skeptical. “I have an openly gay man in comedy for over 20 years,” he said, “and I am telling you that even the most gay-friendly execs at a major studio are not going...

When Aubrey Plaza’s colleague handed her the script for “Emily the Criminal,” she was immediately struck by it. “It was just one of those scripts that I started to read, and I just flew through it,” she says. “It's so readable and fun…it has this momentum that propels you forward.” While Plaza had found her next great project, director John Patton Ford explains why it took 12 years to write the st...

In 1994 Kevin Smith wrote, produced, and directed his first feature “Clerks.” The movie became a cult classic, and Smith introduced the audience to Jay and Silent Bob, the fictional friends portrayed by Jason Mewes and Smith, respectively. Despite the film’s success, the filmmaker reveals he didn’t necessarily have a plan moving forward. “There's never been a career path,” he says. “There's never...

Documentarian Alex Pritz didn’t have a background in film. He studied environmental science in college and was certain he wanted to be a scientist to “work on these big problems plaguing our planet,” he says. But at the end of his time at university, he realized that film was a better way to engage with big issues. “I have always been interested in participatory video working with communities that...

This week, The Business revisits a conversation with Danny Strong, writer, producer, and creator of “Dopesick,” which has 14 Emmy nominations for the portrayal of the evils of Purdue Pharma. Before co-creating the hit show “Empire,” Strong won accolades for writing two HBO movies based on real events: “Recount” and “Game Change,” as well as “Lee Daniels’ The Butler.” So when he decided to make a s...

Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson are co-creators and co-executive producers of the series “Yellowjackets” on Showtime. The married team say they bonded over a revision class and have been collaborating ever since, but they write the series from the retreat of their own spaces. “We definitely cannot be in the same room when we're working,” Lyle quips. Writing this complex show is a joint effort where...

Filmmaker Peter Jackson was 3 years old when The Beatles first appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Show” on February 9,1964. His family didn’t own a television and he didn’t see the original airing because he believes New Zealand didn’t broadcast the TV show. “Even though I was born in 1961, I kind of don't really have a story or any memory of The Beatles in the ‘60s, which is crazy because I lived all t...

Actor, comedian, musician, and producer Steve Martin had been invited to one of talent manager’s Sandy Gallin’s showbiz parties in New York. There, he recalls seeing a lot of actors, including three older ones, when Gallin suggested he should write something for them. “I thought, ‘That's a good idea: three older guys who live in a building and solve murders because they don't have anything else to...

Filmmaker Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic’s debut feature “Murina” won best first film at Cannes last year. Though it may seem like a story of instant success, the Croatian director says she spent years educating and establishing herself. When something happens “out of the blue and overnight, it's actually ten years of work behind it,” she explains. Kusijanovic had worked at different film companies a...

B.J. Novak knows a thing or two about comedic writing. He spent a lot of time in the writers’ room and starred as Ryan Howard on NBC’s hit series “The Office.” Now, he’s taking his writing skills to the big screen, debuting as a director in the comedy-thriller, “ Vengeance .” “When you realize someone has a little regret in their eyes… you could be very careful with an actor and see how you could...

After almost an eight-year hiatus, actor Jenny Slate and director Dean Fleischer-Camp are bringing their lovable Marcel the Shell back to life. This time audiences will see the seashell with two pink shoes and one plastic eye, who babbles insightful and funny life-observations, in the stop-motion, feature-length mockumentary, “ Marcel the Shell With Shoes On .” The online shorts were a smash-hit a...

Filmmaker Sara Dosa’s childhood fascination and fear of volcanoes shaped her career. While finishing her last film “The Seer and the Unseen” about an Icelandic woman fighting to save a lava field from becoming a road, she came across archival footage from Katia and Maurice Krafft, the renowned French volcanologists. “They had shot hundreds of hours of footage, and Iceland was one of their absolute...

To some members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, creator Dustin Lance Black’s FX series “ Under the Banner of Heaven ” is an unfair depiction of their religion. Having grown up in the church, Black says he is not surprised. “As I grew older, and got to know more that this is a church that does not like anything questioned,” Black says. “They have the saying to ‘doubt your doubts...

Kim Masters and Matt Belloni celebrate the Disney-Pixar film Inside Out 2, which knocked the box office out of its summer slump with a whopping $155 million domestic debut. They also discuss Netflix’s latest venture into “immersive entertainment centers.” Plus, Masters speaks to Reggie Rock Bythewood and Gina Prince-Bythewood, two executive producers behind National Geographic’s anthology series G...

Comedians Desus Nice and The Kid Mero have careers that span from social media to television’s late-night show scene. Today, they host “ Desus & Mero ” on Showtime. The duo started being funny on Twitter, which opened doors, but also made them understand their craft. “Sometimes you’re just tweeting away and it’s not getting you anywhere. You see people and they have really great tweets, and th...

Twice Academy Award winner Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy directed two episodes of Disney’s limited series “ Ms. Marvel .” She shares with Kim Masters her path from making intimate documentary shorts in her home country of Pakistan, to animated features, to “Ms. Marvel” – her first live-action, narrative fiction series. “I know what ‘Black Panther’ did for communities across the world. And this is exactly...

Brothers Aaron and Adam Nee are the directing-duo behind the hit movie “The Lost City,” starring Sandra Bullock, Channing Tatum, Daniel Radcliffe, and Brad Pitt. They’ve been collaborators since childhood. Adam says, “In prepping, we really get inside of each other's heads – and we just know each other so well, and have the same kind of ideas and taste, so that allows us to be on the same page on...

It took Samuel L. Jackson years to find a home for his passion project, “The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey.” He’s the star and executive producer of the miniseries, based on a novel by Walter Mosley. Apple TV+ finally stepped up, but Jackson says once the project got going, the trillion-dollar-plus company still pinched pennies when he came to them with budget requests. “You go, ‘Wait a minute, did yo...

“Squid Game” creator Hwang Dong-hyuk had never written a TV series before, but after a decade conceptualizing it, he created an unprecedented global sensation. “Squid Game” is about a dystopian survival competition where hundreds of cash-strapped players aim for a multi-million dollar cash prize. The show has become No. 1 in 90 countries and the most-watched Netflix program of all time. The USC-tr...

Tony McNamara's viciously satirical Hulu series “The Great” follows young Empress Catherine's adventures in her adopted country: 18th century imperial Russia. McNamara’s version is one with a lot of swearing, sex, and violence, and the series is now in production on its third season. As is typical for a streamer, Hulu doesn’t tell McNamara much about who’s watching. But he’s fine with that. “You s...

Before he co-created the FX comedy series “Reservation Dogs,” Sterlin Harjo directed three micro-budget films in his home state of Oklahoma. He had knocked on Hollywood’s door but somehow he never could find financing. "I even heard, like, this film’s just a little too Indian," Harjo says. "Or, this film’s not Indian enough. So, it was very confusing." Now, FX is preparing to release a second seas...

Natasha Rothwell played Kelli on HBO’s “Insecure,” and the  beleaguered spa manager in “The White Lotus.” Now, she’s in the hit sequel “Sonic The Hedgehog 2.” With her own production company and an overall deal at ABC Signature, she plans to create movies and TV that skip the tired tropes and feature diverse casts. "I think so many scripts use page real estate in Act One just to justify someone's...