The Kingcast

NYT Best Selling Author and Kingcast favorite guest Stephen Graham Jones (The Only Good Indians, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter) makes his triumphant return to the show to delve into the rural weirdness of Stephen King's Children of the Corn.  Discussion flickers between the original King short story and the not-that-great 1984 film adaptation of the same name starring Linda Hamilton and Peter Horton....

Who better to pontificated about the similarities and differences between two of the most popular American authors of all time than Ray Bradbury's own chosen biographer and your dedicated Kingcast boys. New York Times best selling author, biographer, and journalist Sam Weller (The Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray Bradbury) makes his first appearance on The Kingcast to discuss his relationship...

One of our greatest working character actors joins up for his first appearance on The Kingcast. You know Stephen Root from just about everything, from Office Space to King of the Hill to No Country For Old Men to Man In The High Castle and the recent hit horror/comedy show Widow's Bay. Root shows up ready to rock as we look back over his career, from working with George A. Romero on Monkey Shines...

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 adaptat...

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 Shi...

Screenwriter Jeremy Slater (Moon Knight, The Exorcist, Mortal Kombat II) returns to The Kingcast to talk about... not Stephen King. Well, not directly, anyway. The topic up for discussion is Joe Hill's 2025 epic horror tome King Sorrow which contains many familial references and those don't just include his famous father.  The story centers a group of college friends who uncover the ability to sum...

The very funny Nick Kocher and Brian McElhaney had never seen David Cronenberg's The Dead Zone, so naturally we had to make them watch it and report back. You know Nick & Brian collectively as BriTANiK from their sketch work at SNL, their writing on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and the two movies they have coming out this April: Pizza Movie, which they wrote and directed and is out now on...

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-ch...

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 Body...

Horror author Nat Cassidy (When the Wolf Comes Home) has a new book of short stories coming out called I Know A Place: Rest Stop and Other Dark Detours so it was only natural that we brought him back on the show to talk about one of King's most beloved short story collections: Nightmares and Dreamscapes. This is one of King's doorstoppers, so me, Breznican, and Nat all pick our three favorite stor...

We have something of an academic detour for you with this episode. Listen along as we're joined by Professor Andy Hageman (Director of the Center for Ethics and Public Engagement at Luther College) who recently got access to the exclusive Stephen King Archive where he got hands on with King's original typed manuscripts and discovered something fairly interesting about King's process, particularly...

Director Natasha Kermani (Abraham's Boys, The Dreadful) is our guest this week and she picked a very interesting title to discuss: Stephen King's collaboration with his son Joe Hill titled Throttle. Kermani is no stranger to the work of Joe Hill, having adapted his story Abraham's Boys last year, and has some keen insights into both father and son's work, especially how both authors wrote about th...

Mr. Clarke himself, Randy Havens, joins The Kingcast boys to talk about the final Stranger Things season, the not-so-chill fans that showed up in its wake, working with Frank Darabont and looking back at Darabont's very first Stephen King adaption: The Woman in the Room. 

For those sensitive listeners out there, consider this fair warning: when our guest Mallory O'Meara (Girly Drinks, The Lady from the Black Lagoon) pops up on The Kingcast, things tend to get a little raunchy and this episode is no exception. She may be a James Beard award winning author, but she also hosts a podcast called Reading Smut. Mallory returns to the show to finally dive into some Dark To...

It is time to return to Mid-World in this final Kingcast episode of 2025 as indie horror star Graham Skipper (Re-Animator: The Musical, Almost Human, Beyond the Gates) joins Breznican and Vespe to discuss the fourth book in Stephen King's Dark Tower series: Wizard and Glass.  We break down the plot, underline how it weirdly mirrors the plot that George Lucas would later use for The Phantom Menace,...

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) an...

If you're a fan of SCREAM then you're going to want to pay attention to today's episode featuring none other than Stu Macher and Billy Loomis themselves, Matthew Lillard and Skeet Ulrich. They're appearing in the upcoming Five Nights At Freddy's 2 and they decided to stop by The Kingcast to talk about their love of King's work and specifically Frank Darabont's adaptation of The Shawshank Redemptio...

Peter Hall and Paul Gandersman, the writer/directors behind the upcoming genre flick MAN FINDS TAPE, join your intrepid Kingcast hosts to discuss one of Stephen King's underappreciated and as yet unadapted books: Joyland.  Conversation jumps between their film, their deep cut Stephen King origin stories, some Dark Tower nerdiness, and why Joyland plays so well into King's strengths as an author. W...

Pop culture experts and the hosts of HBO's It: Welcome to Derry Official Companion Podcast, Marc Bernardin and Princess Weekes, join Breznican and Vespe in the crossover event of the decade! What better place to land Marc and Princess than The Kingcast where we can talk through Stephen King stuff, the deeper themes at play in It: Welcome to Derry, and what it's like running the official HBO compan...

At long last director Edgar Wright finally makes an appearance on The Kingcast and he brought some friends along. Wright stops by to talk about his current Stephen King adaptation, The Running Man, and it just so happens that his cast was also promoting the movie so you're going to get Stephen King Origin Stories (TM) from stars Glen Powell, Lee Pace, and Josh Brolin before a lengthy chat with Edg...

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!

The day is here! Andy and Barbara Muschietti, the creative duo behind the It films and the upcoming prequel series, have finally come on The Kingcast to talk all about dat boy, Pennywise. Or is it dat girl, Pennywise? This is one of many topics brought up as Andy and Barbara discuss their love of King's work, the challenges of adapting for both the big and small screen, and even share some never b...

Upcoming genre directors Chris Stuckmann (Shelby Oaks) and Mercedes Bryce Morgan (Bone Lake) join Vespe for a very special live recording from this year's Fantastic Fest in Austin, TX. This broad King conversation hones in on a couple of specific titles, including the recent The Long Walk adaptation, Mike Flanagan's Doctor Sleep adaptation, and someone insane tries to defend Secret Window starring...

Clark Collis returns to The Kingcast to discuss a very specific moment in horror cinema: the '90s through the early 2010s. His new book, Screaming and Conjuring, takes us through that era of many hits, twice as many misses, and a genre that was feeling lost as it whiplashed between generic studio remakes, found footage ripoffs, and torture porn. King's genre work was getting some pretty bad adapta...

You know him as young Ben Hanscom in the recent It films and now Jeremy Ray Taylor is all growed up. He's a married man and works with cars, but he still acts and has a new project out in theaters, an action comedy by the name of London Calling where he co-stars with Josh Duhamel as a nerdy kid forced to tag along with a lousy hitman by his mobster father in order to toughen him up some. We talk a...