From KCRW, I'm Kim Masters, and this is The Business.

Filmmaker Ruski 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 36 years ago.

And for him, all that is a lot. I have been working with very small budgets, very small films. So to think that my own work is lined up in a place like the Oscars where Hollywood stars are all there and to think that my film is part of that, it's really hard not to feel some sort of hesitation

of not knowing what to do with myself.

Hamaguchi talks about landing international acclaim

while holding on to his artistic vision

and how Parasite director Bong Junho

indirectly opened the door for him to make his three-hour Oscar contender.

But first, we banter. Stick around. It's the business from KCRW.

I am joined by my partner in banter, Matt Bellany. Hello, Matt. Hi there. So as we tape, we do not know how big the opening of the Batman will be, but we predict it will be big.

This despite its length, two hours and 45 minutes without the credits.

It would be better for Warner Brothers, of course, if it were shorter, you can fit more screenings in per day, but still expected to be big and play well.

You know, people seemingly never get tired of Batman iterations.

And counting on that, AMC, the theater chain, has instituted an experiment, I guess.

They are trying something called variable pricing in which they are saying, you know what,

you all want to see this movie, so we are going to make you pay just a little bit more.

Yeah, it's between 50 cents and $1.50 more, depending on the market.

There are a few markets where they are not doing the surcharge.

It's an interesting move because, you know, the theater business obviously is so challenged.

They're coming out of, you know, the lows of the pandemic and really trying to get their footing back. And you know, you might think that this might just be a cash grab, try to take advantage of a high volume movie and try to get some, you know, some revenue back that you lost.

But I actually think this is a smart move.

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