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

The last day, I think, we spent 100 grand, which was pretty expensive, you know.

I mean, that's so spanking.

Saturday Night Live alumnus Rob Schneider is defying conventional wisdom and maybe all wisdom

by risking a lot of his own money to make a TV series his way.

He has total creative control, but no plan yet for where it might air or stream.

And later on the show, Wall Street analyst Rich Greenfield runs a failed experiment with TV everywhere

and weighs in on Rupert Murdoch's bid for Time Warner.

But first on the news banter, movie studios chase more superheroes. Stay tuned. It's the business

from KCRW. I'm joined by my fellow banterer, Matt Bellany of the Hollywood Reporter.

Hey, Matt.

Hi there.

So, Matt, one of the big pieces of news at Comic-Con in San Diego was Sony's announcement that, guess what, they're going to try and build out a universe.

This is a very original idea.

A superhero universe with a villain movie, Sinister Six.

It's a spinoff of a team of Spider-Man villains set for November 2016. And this is sort of relevant for a couple of reasons, one of which has to do with the fact that everybody and their cousin is trying to get into this game of building out a superhero universe very much inspired by the success of Marvel.

Yeah, if you look at what Marvel has done over the past five years, $6.1 billion in box

offers for eight films, that's a pretty good track record. So every studio is now trying to

build out this universe around their superhero properties. You look at what Warner Brothers is doing

with Batman and the Justice League, and you look at what Warner Brothers is doing with

Batman and Superman in the Justice League, and you look at what Fox is doing with the X-Men,

and what Universal is now trying to do with their monster properties like Dracula and those

...