The Kingcast

The last thing we expected to arrive in ye ol' Kingcast mailbox was an email from Disney+ saying "hey, we think there's a Stephen King connection you might like in our super popular family-friendly cartoon series." Thankfully they did reach out, though, because we ended up with this delightful chat with Big City Greens's co-creator, Shane Houghton, who arrived to fill us in on getting King hims...

Throttle is a deeper cut King story, co-written with his author son, Joe Hill. The two pay tribute to the great Richard Matheson and the result is this odd story about fathers and their children hung on the skeleton of a road-rage thriller as a bunch of tough bikers are chased down by a mysterious and murderous semi-truck.

Children of the Corn continues to be a Stephen King staple after all these years so it's fitting that the Kingcast boys get a chance to corner actor and musician Courtney Gains to talk about his experiences playing the red-headed, scythe-wielding, teenage rapscallion Malachai. Of course we also talk about some of his other endeavors as well, from his latest album, Liberation Day (available now...

Kingcast favorite Kate Siegel (Haunting of Hill House, Midnight Mass) returns to the show to discuss her latest genre appearance as the special guest star for the Season 3 premiere episode of The Creep Tapes, debuting next Tuesday, September 15th on Shudder/AMC+. We talk about the sexual politics of that episode, her working relationship with star Mark Duplass, and how she prepared for one spe...

Buddy, directed by Casper Kelly, is sees release this Friday, August 28th.

Doctor Sleep follows a grown up Danny Torrance who struggles with the same addiction and trauma issues his dad had all the while a roaming caravan of nomadic psychic vampires roam the country seeks out children with The Shine to do not so nice things to them in order to prolong their quasi-immortality.

This past weekend we lost genre great Chuck Russell, who directed the best Nightmare On Elm Street sequel, one of the best horror remakes (The Blob), and introduced the world to Cameron Diaz in The Mask. Last year we had the great pleasure of interviewing him on this show, so in honor of the man and his legacy we're rerunning that chat this week. Most of the conversation revolves around his re...

On the table for this discussion about where to start with Stephen King's work are short stories like The Mist, 1408, and Here There Be Tigers and some of his bigger novels. Which made the cut, though? 11/22/63? Eyes of the Dragon? The Dark Tower series? It? You'll just have to listen to find out.

Children of the Corn takes a look at the mysteries and horrors that can be discovered if you wander too far off the beaten path while driving across America. What really goes on in the heartland among the rows of corn and creepy smiles of the way too young locals? King's short story was originally published in Penthouse in the late '70s before seeing a reprint in Skeleton Crew and the film was ...

Ray Bradbury was an icon to most fiction authors. He wrote some of the best sci-fi, fantasy, and dystopian fiction of all time, including Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, Dandelion Wine, and Something Wicked This Way Comes.

King's 11/22/63 is one of his best books, following a young teacher as he gives up years of his life to try to change the world by preventing the Kennedy assassination with the help of an ailing diner owner who just so happens to have a wormhole in his back pantry. It's a tale of unintended consequences (both good and bad) and an example of King at the top of his game.

Obsession rules. It's the latest horror sensation to take over the box office and has the genre community abuzz with how good it is. So naturally we had to get two of the stars on the show to talk about their cool ass movie and their favorite Stephen King things. So, we're joined by Michael Johnston and Cooper Tomlinson and topics include their Stephen King origin stories, which King movie ada...

University of Maine Professor (and the Stephen E. King Chair in Literature, by the way) Caroline Bicks spent a year combing through King's original manuscripts at his own personal archive and that resulted in an essential book for King obsessives: Monsters In The Archives that gives us new insights into King's process and illuminates paths not taken on some of his most iconic stories, like The ...

How far would you go to protect your family and friends? This is a question at the center of Joe Hill's King Sorrow, a cautionary tale of who you make deals with and to always read the fine print.

The Dead Zone is an early and much-loved King book about a school teacher who awakens from a coma and discovers he has the ability to see the past and future of people he meets via simple touch. David Cronenberg's film is methodic and tragic with one hell of a cast, from Christopher Walken to Martin Sheen.

William Sadler has been in some of the best Stephen King adaptations, including the Frank Darabont Trifecta of The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, and The Mist and now he's on The Kingcast to discuss all that plus detours to his starring role in Tales From The Crypt: Demon Knight, his oddly nude bad guy in Die Hard 2, Death in Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, and his latest film, a tongue-in...

I hope you brought your sad tissues with you today because this episode gets emotional real dang quickly. Our guest is Wil Wheaton who is returning to The Kingcast to talk about all things Stand By Me and The Body as Rob Reiner's film celebrates its 40th anniversary and Wil steps behind the mic and into adult Gordy LaChance's shoes as he narrates a new audiobook of Stephen King's novella, The B...

Nightmares and Dreamscapes contains a whopping 24 short stories that range from melancholy observations of the fleeting nature of time to a secret society of bat people that rule all the world's governments. King dips his toes into Romero Zombie territory in this book, hardboiled crime fiction, a Sherlock Holmes tale, and one of his best: a loving homage to HP Lovecraft.

The Dark Half is a story about an author battling his pseudonym (literally) and the behind the scenes of King's process while writing this story reveals that perhaps the author wasn't fully finished with his own alter ego, Richard Bachman, either.

Throttle is Joe Hill and Stephen King's homage to Richard Matheson's Duel, but with some Sons of Anarchy and Breaking Bad thrown in for good measure. What happens when a biker gang is attacked on the open road by a killer truck driver? That's the question in front of this tale about a heavily dysfunctional father and son have to try to survive this ordeal which they may or may not have unknowin...

Originally printed in Night Shift, The Woman in the Room is an early non-horror story from King inspired by his own mother's death about a man weighing whether or not to help his dying mother end her suffering. Darabont's adaptation was the very first "Dollar Baby," King's program where he'd give limited rights to young filmmakers to adapt his short stories for the low, low price of a single do...

The Little Sisters of Eluria was first published in 1998 and later republished in King's short story collection Everything's Eventual. It follows Roland, the gunslinger, as he pursues the Man in Black and happens upon some kindly nun healers in a small town. Appearances can be deceiving, though, and Roland finds himself in very real danger.

Wizard and Glass is a flashback novel that begins by resolving the epic cliffhanger from The Wastelands (involving a suicidal train who likes riddles) and then dives into the traumatic past of Roland Deschain, the leader of this new band of gunslingers. It's a sweeping romance, a Shakespearean tragedy, and an action/adventure fantasy all rolled into one cohesive narrative.

Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele, were tragically murdered over the weekend and the film community is still reeling. Reiner was not only a kind man, someone dedicated to protecting the rights and freedoms of everybody, and a talented filmmaker, he was one of the very few filmmakers that understood exactly how to translate Stephen King to the big screen. Author Nat Cassidy (The Wolf at the Door...

Based on King's novella Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, Frank Darabont's film is already at icon status and may prove to be a generational work of cinema. It focuses on the friendship between two prison inmates and celebrates the near miraculous effects of hope in the face of despair. It's a rare Stephen King story that deals solely with real life monsters and will go down as one of...

Joyland takes place in the early 1970s and follows a heartbroken high school graduate as he goes to do some summer work at a local pierside amusement park. He quickly becomes intrigued by the story of a ghostly young woman who supposedly haunts the horror ride and starts pulling at a thread that could potentially solve her murder.

It: Welcome to Derry chronicles the events of the 1962 cycle of the evil entity behind Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Tension is high, the civil rights movement is making ground and the Cold War is about to reach its zenith. All this is fertile ground for It to do its thing. It: Welcome to Derry airs on HBO Max every Sunday and the official companion podcast can be downloaded immediately after wh...

The Running Man was adapted into an '80s action star vehicle for Arnold Schwarzenegger, a film that is extremely entertaining and sharply satirical, but one that bears little resemblance to the King/Bachman novel it was based on. Edgar Wright and his team decided to make a film that hews closer to the source material. The Running Man hits theaters November 7th.

The Kingcast's Eric Vespe and Anthony Breznican are doing their own watch along show as HBO's It: Welcome to Derry rolls out. Check out this exclusive feed drop as they dive into episode 1 of the Pennywise prequel show from the creators of the It films. If you like what you hear make sure to subscribe to Watching It: Welcome to Derry to hear Brez and Vez discuss each episode week to week!

It: Welcome to Derry premieres October 26th on HBO and explores the events of the cycle previous to the one featured in the films, set all the way back in 1962 Derry.

This Kingcast episode was recorded in front of a live (rowdy bar) audience.

Clark Collis is known as an entertainment journalist, historian, and author and comes at this conversation with a ton of love for the horror genre and of Stephen King's work therein. He's also ready to drop a few entertaining film coverage stories with his fellow ex-pat journalist pals who just so happen to host this show.

2019's Pet Sematary is a wild swing of a remake directed by Dennis Widmyer and Kevin Kolsch that goes even darker than the original Mary Lambert adaptation. It sticks to the main beats of King's original story until it veers off in a wildly different direction, a decision that proved divisive among King constant readers, but one you have to admire over playing it safe and just doing a simple mo...

The Long Walk follows a group of young men engaged in a deadly game where the prize is an escape from poverty, but the penalty is death and there can be only one winner. The Long Walk is currently out in theaters.

Set in an alternate world where the US run by an authoritarian regime, The Long Walk follows a group of young men who partake in a deadly endurance contest where there can be only one survivor. Despite the heavy odds and even heavier penalties for failure, friendships grow and bonds are formed as these guys support each other mile after mile.

The Lawnmower Man is a controversial King adaptation and one that King himself had to sue to get his name removed from. The movie shares virtually nothing with the original King short story outside of a spark of telekinesis and a lawnmower. Jeff Fahey stars as Jobe, a simple man who is made smarter thanks to Pierce Brosnan's mad scientist experiments and a VR headset.

The Institute brings King back into familiar territory as he focuses on a bunch of kids gifted with telekinetic powers being studied by a shady government organization. There's currently a TV adaptation airing week to week on MGM+ starring today's guest.

The Shawshank Redemption was not a success on release, but has grown into a modern day classic, one of those perfect lightning in a bottle movies. The period film is set in a corrupt prison as a wrongfully convicted inmate makes friends, enemies, and hatches a decades long escape.

Cycle of the Werewolf began life as a Bernie Wrightson calendar and King couldn't help but expand on the idea of documenting a different werewolf attack every month on the full moon into a novella length narrative following a little boy in a wheelchair facing off against a werewolf that is terrorizing his small town.

Fairy Tale is King's COVID novel. In the early days of lockdown, this is what King's imagination fed to him, an escapist story of a young man on a quest into a fantasy world that holds fortunes, danger, and the ability to save his aging dog, Radar.

The Stand is Stephen King's epic story of good versus evil set against the ruins of a plague-riddled America as the fate of all of humanity is decided by the followers of the saintly Mother Abigail and the dastardly charming devil-in-human-form Randall Flagg.

Breznican and Vespe talk with the two actors about their first impressions of the material, their conversations with writer/director Mike Flanagan, and just how impressed they both were to share the screen with both OG Kingcast hosts.

Mike Flanagan returns to The Kingcast on the one year anniversary of Scott Wampler's passing to discuss the impact Scott had on his newest Stephen King adaptation, The Life of Chuck, from the initial Kingcast host cameos to the decision to dedicate the film to Scott after his death. Don't worry, the whole thing isn't a bummer, we also talk about assembling the killer cast of the movie as well...

Matthew Lillard (Scream, Scooby-Doo, Five Nights At Freddy's) joins Breznican and Vespe to talk about taking part in the latest Stephen King adaptation: The Life of Chuck. This wild conversation goes off the rails within 20 seconds of the intro so you know you're in for a good time. There is Stephen King talk, of course, but also some insight into working with Uwe Boll, one of the world's worst...

Celebrated novelist and writer Tananarive Due joins us to discuss Stephen King's The Outsider and the quite good HBO mini-series adaptation starring Jason Bateman, Cynthia Erivo, and Ben Mendelsohn. She also dives deep into her background with King, playing with in the Rock Bottom Remainders, and the deep, personal family trauma that went into her novel, The Reformatory.

Director Julia Max (whose upcoming horror film, The Surrender, is released May 23rd) joins Vespe and Breznican to talk about one of King's less-talked about forays into the world of the TV mini-series: 2002's Rose Red. We talk about severed fingers, creepy mirrored ballrooms, and a surprising amount about what exactly happens when we die. Things go from goofy to philosophical and then back to...

Writer/Director Joel Souza joins up to talk about an obscure King short story called "A Death." Souza also opens up about the tragedy behind his latest film, Rust, and discusses why he finished the film after the shocking shooting incident that took the life of his cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins. So, we have some deep, sad conversations sprinkled throughout with nerdy book and movie talk. N...

Did you know that back in the '80s Stephen King collaborated with his son, Owen, on a GI Joe character? It's true! They named him Crystal Ball and sent their thoughts to Hasbro who, of course, ended up making the toy. We're joined by Larry Hama, the mind behind the GI Joe comics, the creator of all your favorite Joe characters like Snake Eyes, The Baroness, and Storm Shadow, and all around leg...

Christopher Landon (Happy Death Day, Freaky) returns to The Kingcast to talk about his new film, DROP (releasing this weekend in a theater near you) as well as Stephen King's THE MIST. This wide-ranging conversation covers Chris's relationship with King's work, his famous father's influence in pointing him towards horror when he was a kid, his bizarre first read through of The Mist at age 12 ...

Writer/Director Ami Canaan Mann (Texas Killing Fields, the upcoming Audrey's Children) happens to be a big Stephen King fan and graciously gave us her time to come on and talk about King's very first hit: Carrie. We dive into the book more than the movie this time around, but there's plenty of talk about Brian De Palma's outstanding adaptation as well. We point out a lot of the differences in...