Ethan Hawke is putting on a tinfoil hat for eerie supernatural scripted podcast “Midnight Radio,” slated to hit your earbuds just in time for Halloween.
Hawke stars as the host of a conspiracy-themed late-night AM radio show who one night receives a mysterious call from a man claiming to be part of a secret U.S. space mission lost to history. The story unfolds in real time, leading Hawke’s radio host to spiral into a conspiratorial plot involving a “sprawling web of government cover-ups, interdimensional breaches and psychological warfare.”
Per the podcast’s logline: “As the broadcast unfolds, strange signals hidden in the radio static reveal themselves. With each episode building on the last, one question grows more urgent — who, or what, is really on the other end of the line? And what do they want?”
The first episode of “Midnight Radio” will be released Oct. 22, available on the iHeartRadio app and all major podcast platforms. New episodes will be released every succeeding Thursday at 12 a.m. PT / 3 a.m. ET.
Listen to a preview of “Midnight Radio”:
The series hails from the team behind “Sinister” and “The Black Phone” movies (Hawke starred in all three films). The nine-episode series is created and co-written by Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill and produced by Under The Influence Productions (founded by Ethan Hawke and his wife, Ryan Hawke), Crooked Highway and Mickey Schiff in collaboration with iHeartPodcasts.
In addition to Hawke, the ensemble cast includes Noah Centineo, Willa Fitzgerald, Vincent D’Onofrio, Levon Hawke, Austin Pendleton and Hubert Point-Du Jour.
“None of us had made a podcast before, so it was a blast to pour ourselves completely into a venture where we had total creative freedom,” said Hawke. “There’s an intimacy to the audio-only medium that can be really powerful, and in our case, used to a terrifying effect. Of course, it requires great writing… Fortunately, Scott Derrickson and Cargill are two of the best writers I’ve ever worked with.”
“‘Midnight Radio’ is a labor of love, and an act of unfettered creativity,” Derrickson said. “Ethan, Cargill and I decided to make this without any financial backing. Our aim was to make an eerie, complex and increasingly compelling narrative podcast with zero creative restrictions. ‘Midnight Radio’ has a purity to it — it’s exactly what we wanted it to be. And now we’re excited to be working with iHeart to bring it to listeners everywhere.”
The Hawkes’ Under the Influence Productions is producing, with UTIP’s Jimmy Bie leading for the company, alongside Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill’s Crooked Highway and Mickey Schiff. The team is independently co-financing the project. Vince Cheng, president of production for Crooked Highway, is overseeing the release. The project is repped by CAA and WME. The series will be distributed by iHeartPodcasts.
