From KCRW in Santa Monica, I'm Claude Browdessa Ackner, and this is The Business.

So you still want to do the show business, and you think that you got what it takes, I mean you really got a rap and be all at, but prepare yourself for the breaks. Check it out.

This week on our program, the billion dollar business that will no longer be ignored.

We look at the burgeoning video game industry.

Plus, we revisit our conversation with the Swifty Lazar of kids' agents,

with horror stories of mafia moms, Claricill emergencies,

and casting for the role of the Chubby Kid.

You're listening to The Business from NPR.

Music You're listening to The Business from NPR. Perhaps it's the heat of August, but things are looking a little bizarre in Hollywoodland.

For instance, it seems that the creator of the comic book Spawn and the writer of A History of Violence

are going to give new meaning to the phrase, over the rainbow. Warner Brothers has owned the rights

to the original Wizard of Oz ever since it acquired Ted Turner's Library of MGM films in

1986. Now they've acquired the rights to the book Oz, a revisionist take on the L. Frank

Bown books that inspired the classic film. Todd McFarlane, who created the comic book character

spawn, told Variety, quote, you've still got Dorothy trapped in an odd place, but she's much

closer to Ripley from Alien than a helpless singing girl. We're bracing ourselves for the scene

where, after a seeming bout of intense indigestion,

a flying monkey bursts out of Glinda's chest cavity in a shower of viscera.

Meanwhile, NBC is reviving the cheesy athletic competition American Gladiators as a mid-season replacement.

This would be troubling enough, given the worldwide spandex and body oil shortage.

But it also shines a spotlight on NBC's new co-chairman, Ben Silverman, and his potential

conflict of interest. The production company founded by Silverman, which produces NBC hits like

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