The trio of Ethan Hawke, Scott Derrickson, and C. Robert Cargill have been making people scream for over a decade now, from the original Sinister to last year's icy Black Phone 2. Each of their collaborations has thrived by mixing the naturally horrifying with the supernatural, exploring disturbing Super 8 snuff films with dark secrets and taking on a serial killer whose young victims still make calls from beyond the grave. All three have now reunited for a chilling new passion project that feels right up the same alley while throwing back to a style of horror that doesn't exist in quite the way it used to. Better yet, Collider is excited to bring our readers the first listen.
In the latest extension of their creative partnership, they've launched a new horror podcast published by iHeartPodcasts titled Midnight Radio, which released its first episode today. The five-time Oscar-nominated Hawke stars as the host of an old cult-favorite late-night AM radio talk show that specializes in taking the calls of the conspiracy-minded and anyone with a supposed encounter with the supernatural. However, things take a turn on one evening when someone calls in claiming to have been part of a U.S. space mission lost to history, and the story only gets weirder from there. Everything unfolds in real time as the host is exposed to "a sprawling web of government cover-ups, interdimensional breaches and psychological warfare," and curious signals obscured in the radio static slowly become apparent. As episodes build, the question of who, or what, is really on the other end of the line comes to the forefront.
Derrickson and Cargill co-created Midnight Radio, something apparent in how the premise echoes the same sense of mystery in Sinister and The Black Phone. Hawke and Ryan Hawke's banner, Under The Influence Productions, also produces with Crooked Highway and iHeartPodcasts. In coordination with the first episode, Collider's Maggie Lovitt was able to speak to the star about how this all came together, stemming back to when the directing and writing duo brought Hawke into the horror genre. "They kind of convinced me to do my first scary movie, Midnight Madness, and we just had a great time," he recalled. "Those guys are really smart and really wildly creative, really fun, talented men." Through working together, they learned of each other's similar interests in the old-school immersive horror of The Twilight Zone, War of the Worlds, and old AM talk shows that they wanted to translate into a project.
"So, we did Sinister together, we had a great time, and then we did Black Phone together, and we continued... Oh, we're all giant Twilight Zone fans, right? We're just Twilight Zone nerds, and we're kind of talking a lot about how come there's not a show like that anymore, and this — we're all Art Bell fans, who had this AM talk radio program that was really very interesting and kind of always thought-provoking. They dreamed up this idea of, well, it was born out of, I don't know if it's just urban legend or if it's true, but when Orson Welles read War of the Worlds, people thought the Martians were really attacking the world. We had this kind of feeling like, 'Wouldn't it be amazing to do a podcast that was like a fictional AM radio talk show?' So you would hear it and it could seduce you into feeling like you were really just listening to the radio, you know? And they just wrote this brilliant piece."
'Midnight Radio' Aims to Recapture the Magic of Radio Plays
Podcasting was new ground for Hawke, Derrickson, and Cargill. The former called Midnight Radio his "first DIY podcast," self-funded by the team based entirely on their own interests. However, they didn't enter the medium entirely unfamiliar. Hawke imagined the series in a similar realm to British radio plays that used to draw in big names with splashy productions to make for captivating readings. Podcasting, he believes, is just another medium for such a production, and with Derrickson and Cargill, they were able to go all-out to make theirs special.
"None of us ever made a — when I was a kid they called them radio plays, now they call them podcasts — but I grew up listening to all the Brits do, oh, you know, they would do Lord of the Rings, and they would do Shakespeare plays, and you could listen to them on the radio, and they would really produce them, and they were absolutely fantastic. And all these great British actors cut their teeth on them, you know? From Ian Holm and Judy Dench and Ian McKellen and Sean Connery, and you would listen to all of them, and it's a style of performance where it's really just all about the voice and the writing. And so I was super into it, and those guys are smart enough to pull it off.
While Hawke is already a big voice to have involved, Midnight Radio also landed a starry ensemble to bring the eerie tale to life. Fresh off the recent Street Fighter movie, Noah Centineo joins Vincent D’Onofrio, Willa Fitzgerald, Levon Hawke, Austin Pendleton, Hubert Point-Du Jour, and more among those calling into the fictional radio show. They all contribute to the "sonic landscape" of the production, which Hawke says was such a big focus to draw out audio's specific atmospheric strengths over a visual medium. "I love that expression, sonic landscape, because I think that is what we're trying to do, and the power of audio is immense," he continued. "What I love about it is, when you watch a movie, they're telling you exactly what to think and exactly what to look at and what you're seeing and what the light is like, and when you get told a story, when your parents would read you a story, or you're sitting by a campfire or listening to something, your brain is activated in a different way. And the power of sound is just immense."
Again, he circled back to Art Bell and AM radio as the northern star guiding the podcast. While a radio play with big names and production values is enjoyable, there's a unique, almost otherworldly experience of driving at night to the sounds giving serious discussion to the extraterrestrial and other supernatural occurrences that Hawke wanted to recreate atmospherically. He once more credited Cargill and Derrickson for being so ready with an idea to instill that feeling of being privy to a private, bizarre conversation of things usually saved for hushed tones.
"We all had this shared love of this old radio program, Art Bell, and I once had this... I drove through the night listening to Art Bell on the radio, basically having proof that there were aliens, and it was just one of the most electric evenings of my life, because it was like these callers in were all telling their alien experiences, and it was really powerful. I felt like, gosh, if we could create that mood that it's 12:32 a.m. and you're on a road by yourself and driving in the middle of the highway and there's no lights, and you're just alone with this radio program talking about something that normally people don't talk about, it feels intensely private and mind-expansive. It was what we were just going after. And luckily for me, these guys really had a great vision of what this thing could be.
Could There Be More of 'Midnight Radio'?
It's far too early to tell what kind of legs something like Midnight Radio could have, even with the big names behind it. The series couldn't have picked a better time to start transmitting, though, with the spooky season underway and Halloween just around the corner. Whatever happens, Hawke feels like they have already accomplished their goal and created a podcast that he, Derrickson, Cargill, and the rest of the team were happy with. We started this as our own, like, punk adventure, you know? What felt great about it is we just financed it ourselves, and it was just something we wanted to do, and to see if we could pull it off, and the more we did it, the more we fell in love with it," he concluded.
However, if there is a loyal audience of listeners who want to keep tuning into this eerie radio, he's content to keep hosting beyond the initial story they have planned. "So yeah, we have this kind of nine-episode arc that I think is going to be extremely satisfying, but, of course, it lays the groundwork," Hawke teased. "It's a radio program. A lot more people can call in, and a lot more adventures could go down."
Midnight Radio's first episode is now streaming on the iHeartRadio app and all major podcasting platforms. New episodes will arrive every Thursday at, fittingly, 12 a.m. PT/3 a.m. ET.