From KCRW, I'm Kim Masters, and this is the business.

SAG AFRA Strikes, joining the Writers Guild in a bitter dispute with the studios at a perilous time in Hollywood.

Matt Bellany joins me for a bigger banter as Hollywood shuts down.

Plus, Bob Eiger extends his contract again through 2026 this time, and the summer box office heats up.

Nothing but banter this week. Stick around. It's the business from KCRW.

I am joined by my colleague in banter. Matt. Bellini, hello, Matt. Hi there. Wow. Where do we begin?

Okay. We now have, I think for the first time in 60 years, two guilds out on strike. The writers have been out. SIG after it has gone out. And we are what feels like to me as a very intractable and bad moment. I can't figure out how this industry is going to emerge from this particular

mess. But let's just talk a little bit about the deadline article that dropped like a day or two

before, in which someone purportedly affiliated with AMPTP said that the objective is to make a deal with SAG at some point and starve the writers

out until they start to lose their homes. And I don't know about you, Matt. I suspect you

had the same experience that I did. My feed on social media blew up. Yeah, and that's why I have some doubts about that.

This was a blind-sourced article that purported to be someone in power with the

AMPTP talking about the plan to essentially smoke out the writers.

And I just don't mean, obviously the AMPTP

immediately pushed back and said,

whoever this person is, they have no involvement

in the leadership of the AMPTP.

And not to give the studios too much credit here,

but I tend to agree.

I just don't think that someone in power would do that,

because obviously the reaction is going to have the opposite effect.

It's going to embolden these writers.

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