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

Now that he's retired after many years as the head of the National Association of Theater Owners,

John Fithian feels that he can speak a little more freely about the industry's failures,

including former Disney CEO Bob Chapix's decision to debut movies online.

The days of preferring Disney Plus and subscribers to making money theatrically are gone.

Bob Chapic was not our friend.

And sorry, Mr. Chapic, bye-bye, because like they were losing money while gaining subscribers.

Fithian talks about navigating the pandemic with help from some big Hollywood names.

That time he thought President Obama threw him under the bus in the wake of the 2014 Sony hack and why he's optimistic about the future of movie theaters.

But first, two buddies banter while I'm out of town. Stick around. It's the business from KCRW.

I'm at Bellany filling in in for Kim Masters, and I'm

joined by my banter buddy, Rebecca Keegan, senior editor of film at The Hollywood Reporter. Welcome,

Rebecca. Hi. All right, so you were at the Cannes Film Festival this year. I was not, and there was an

interesting dynamic playing out at Cannes that I want to talk about.

There is a writer's strike, as we all know.

It's coming up on a month of the writers walking out over the lack of a contract with the studios.

And part of that strike has been this call by the guild to not promote work that these writers have done for the struck companies. Now, it's sort of

being followed selectively by the membership in the U.S., but at the Cannes Film Festival, it seemed like

all bets were off. And there you saw many writer-director actors on display promoting their films. What was going on there?

Yeah, Can, as it so often does, felt like a complete bubble far removed from the U.S. film and

television industry this year. There were WGA members who were also directors there, like Wes Anderson,

James Mangold, Martin Scorsese, Todd Haynes.

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