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

It took Samuel L. Jackson years to find a home for one of his passion projects,

the last days of Ptolemy Gray, based on the Walter Mosley novel.

Apple TV Plus finally stepped up, but Jackson says once the project got going,

the trillion-dollar company still pinched some pennies.

There will be times when you say, well, look, we need to do so-and-so and so-and-so.

Well, you know, the budget's not.

Wait a minute. Did you stop selling phones in the last hour or something?

This is only a couple of, you know, it's a couple of watches. That's all we need, you know.

Samuel L. Jackson talks about his mid-career stardom, the team he's had around him for decades,

and the bumpy road bringing the last days of Ptolemy Gray to life.

But first we banter.

Stick around.

It's the business from KCRW.

I am joined by my associate in banter, Matt Bellany. Hello, Matt. Hi there. So, big changes at Warner's. You know, I don't think it's too shocking that David Zaslov, who now runs Warner Brothers Discovery, is changing the guard at the film studio. People thought he might take his time a little bit when he announced that Anne Sarnoff, the head of Warner brothers, was out. And Jason Kiler, of course, the head of Warner Media, people thought, well,

Toby Emerick was still there, and maybe he's just going to take a few minutes and immerse himself

in the movie business and then make a decision. But Zasloff seems to be a man in a hurry.

And he's now said that Toby Amiric somehow suddenly decided that he truly wanted to have a production company to not be head of Warren.

Don't they all?

Yeah, suddenly, the amazing coincidence.

And other changes, you know, he's imitating the Bob Iger vertical strategy, you know, that Disney, they have Pixar and the Lucas film and Marvel, And he wants three verticals that all report directly to him.

Animation, which we don't know who's going to run that.

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