Michael Barbaro

Hi, Michael.

So we usually put together these panels to make sense of major moments in politics and government.

But the world of business gave us a story so big and so high stakes and so theatrical that it could not be contained, I believe, to a single guest.

And that story, of course, is the emerging fight over who will control Warner Brothers Studios, this storied Hollywood institution, which is why we've asked the three of you on.

And I just want to explain what each of you bring to the conversation.

Nicole, you write about Netflix streaming and the business of Hollywood.

Am I capturing you correctly?

Kyle, you cover the movies for The Times and the actors and the directors involved in making them.

You brilliantly profile them week in, week out, and you cover the awards season.

Does that do you justice?

And only the surface.

And Lauren, you write about corporate mergers, and you've been steeped in the details of this particular deal.

Yes.

Okay.

So just to give us a little bit of a roadmap, we're going to spend a lot of time in this conversation talking through the implications of Warner Brothers' discovery ending up in the hands of either of its current major suitors.

But I think we have to start at the boardroom level first.

because that's literally where it begins.

There are a lot of moguls and multi-billion dollar media brands involved in this battle.

And so we're going to bring each of the major players on stage one by one.

Kyle, give us the Cliff Notes version of the protagonist of this story, Warner Brothers.