From KCRW, I'm Matt Holesman, filling in for Kim Masters, and this is The Business.

For the past 20 years, Elise Pearlstein has dedicated her life to documentaries.

First is an award-winning producer, and since 2013 is the Senior Vice President of Documentary

at socially-minded production company Participant Media.

But her career in docs wasn't always a foregone conclusion.

When I go through old notebooks from notes, from films, I kept finding lists of other jobs I

can do. I'd never felt like documentary filmmaking was a sustainable, viable, long-term career path, and I think that's really changed.

As documentaries are having a moment, Elise Pearlstein gives us her view from the middle of it all.

She tells us what participant is looking for in new projects and how she views the big streamers

now that they've become both powerful distribution partners and production competitors.

She also tells us about some upcoming participant releases, including American Factory,

a Verete film that follows employees of a former GM plant in Ohio after it's taken over by a

Chinese billionaire. But first, the banter. Stay tuned, it's the business from KCRW.

I'm Matt Bellany, filling in for Kim Masters this week, and I'm joined by Lucas Shaw,

who is an entertainment reporter for Bloomberg News. Hi, Lucas. Hey, Matt, great to be here.

Okay, so let's start with Disney.

I've heard a ton of people refer to this as D-Day, Disney Plus Day,

when Disney is finally revealing the scripted and unscripted offerings

that are going to power its streaming direct-to-consumer service,

aka the Netflix killer, that's going to launch later this year. And some people believe Disney

is too late to the party. Netflix already has 138 million people who are subscribing to its service.

I actually think the opposite. I think Disney is absolutely well positioned

...