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

Ethan Hawk was working on The Magnificent Seven when a crew member who was reading The Good Lord Bird told him he was the right man to play abolitionist John Brown.

Hawk picked up the award-winning novel, which follows Brown's story through the eyes of an escaped slave that day.

And he quickly became jealous of author James McBride's storytelling.

I was like, okay, just give it up.

Ethan, just give it up.

And then it just got better and better.

And I realized like, well, all right, I can't have written this, but I could act the hell out.

Hawk tells us about the fight to make the new Showtime series, a high wire act in terms of tone,

and McBride, who entrusted his book to Hawk based on a handshake, tells us it was worth it.

But first on the news banter, we'd like to bring you some good news, but the news is not good. Stick around.

It's the business from JCRW. I am joined by my colleague in banter, Matt Bellany. Hello, Matt.

Hi there. So I feel like there's just the same bad story week after week, Matt.

There's no place to rest your gaze.

At Warner's, we have, WarnerMedia is going to do another major layoff.

And I think they will be rearranging who is in charge of what at that place.

As they have already begun, Jason Kler, who came from Hulu,

has reassembled his crew from Hulu,

and I think they are going to be making further changes.

They have had some pretty drastic changes not that long ago

by surprising to many people dropping Bob Greenblatt,

who had an absolute top job there at HBO Max and

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