The writer/director behind the upcoming Sophie Thatcher/Jack Quaid flick COMPANION stops by The Kingcast to have a little chat about Gramma. Not his Gramma. Stephen King's fictional creepy old witch woman that may be after more than a friendly hug from her young grandson. We discuss the importance of King's work and how it has changed through the decades, the smart ways he's kept himself in the public eye, and, of course, why Gramma is a short story with punch that keeps people coming back to...

The very funny novelist (Life Wants You Dead), TV writer (Family Guy, The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt) and Stephen King fan Evan Waite joins Vespe this week to talk about The Shawshank Redemption, both the novella and the Frank Darabont adaptation. Is this the movie America needs this holiday season? One that is full of hope even in the face of the worst of the worst authoritarian regimes and shows all the worst people getting their comeuppance? It just might be. We talk about that as well as...

Thomas Jane has starred in multiple Stephen King movies, like The Mist, Dreamcatcher, and 1922. While he may not be a fan of shoes, he is a massive fan of Stephen King's work, so we talk about his love of King's novels as well as the multiple adaptations he's appeared in, all in front of a live audience at the very first KingCon in Las Vegas. You'll hear Jane's Stephen King origin story, as well as some insight into the making of all his King movies. Keep an ear out for his story about the...

Joe R. Lansdale (Bubba Ho-tep, The Thicket, Cold In July) joins Vespe and special guest co-host Stephen Graham Jones (The Indian Lake Trilogy, Mongrels) to talk about Stephen King's Revival. Kinda. That was the intent, anyway, but when you get two wonderful and prolific genre authors together the talk will always turn to craft, so while there's plenty of King chatter here, don't expect a deep dive into Revival. You will hear some more insane animal encounter stories from Stephen Graham...

Video Game Developer and designer Nate Purkeypile comes on The Kingcast to talk about his new game, The Axis Unseen, his years working at Bethesda on titles like Fallout and Elder Scrolls, how a particular Stephen King book helped him through the troubled launch of Fallout 76, and his love of Frank Darabont's adaptation of The Mist. The Axis Unseen, described as a heavy metal horror game, is available now on Steam and will be available down the line on consoles.

Screenwriter Ian McDonald (who penned this week's Netflix movie Woman of the Hour starring Anna Kendrick) joins Vespe to discuss one of King's odder short stories: Mrs. Todd's Shortcut. This weird one is about a woman who becomes obsessed with shortcuts who ends up disappearing on one and the old Mainer who was perhaps a little in love with her remembering her all these years later. We talk about this story, our own random short cuts we've found in our lives, King using monsters in varying...

Vespe digs deep into the Kingcast Archives and comes up with a 2021 interview Wampler and Vespe conducted with Michael Whelan, the man responsible for defining the look of Stephen King's The Dark Tower. This episode has lived the last 3 years behind a paywall and now you can hear it even if you're not a Patreon subscriber. Whelan is a renowned sci-fi and fantasy artist who was commissioned by King to provide all the artwork for the first and final Dark Tower books. We talk about his...

Kingcast royalty Flula Borg (Pitch Perfect 2, The Suicide Squad) makes his triumphant return to the show and watches the batshit insane The Lawnmower Man. If you've seen the movie, you know it's a wild one. Problematic? Yes. Entertaining? Kinda. A good adaptation? Absolutely not. You will hear talk about VR murder chimps, Pierce Brosnan's absurdly hairy chest, the "give me your tongue" scene, Dippin' Dots, and Hank from Breaking Bad.

It's a John Dies At The End reunion as Vespe is joined by director Don Coscarelli and the original book's author, Jason Pargin to break down one of King's best works: Misery. Unlike previous episodes on this title, King's novel is as the forefront this time around as these three gentlemen discuss the novel and talk about the things that work even better than the fantastic Rob Reiner adaptation. Coscarelli has a new book out called Phiction that contains original short stories from within his...

Guest Co-Host Kate Siegel (Midnight Mass, Hush) leads the discussion on King's female characters with Vespe and special guest Emily V. Gordon (The Big Sick). Kate has come up with different categories for all of King's most famous ladies, from Carrie White to Lisey to Annie Wilkes to Beverly Marsh and Jesse Burlingame. The discussion covers a lot of King's work and what it's like being known as "the wife" to a well known person despite your own accomplishments.

Vanity Fair's Anthony Breznican is not only a great writer, he's a major Stephen King nerd. His feature on The Life of Chuck gave us our first insight into Mike Flanagan's adaption, which just triumphantly premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. Now Breznican is on the show to talk about some King deep cuts, examine The Life of Chuck as a short story and as a film, and how its powerfully uncynical message is direly needed right now. There's also a little bit about the part Vespe...

JT Mollner wrote and directed the very cool indie horror flick Strange Darling, which is out in theaters now, and he also happened to write the screenplay for the upcoming adaptation of Stephen King's The Long Walk. We talk a little bit about The Long Walk and Strange Darling and a lot about Stephen King, with a focus on the absolute banger 2014 novel REVIVAL. This ended up being one of the more chaotic episodes in recent memory, so you're guaranteed a good time. Like when the guest...

It's only right that the director of one of the better Stephen King adaptations has his moment on The Kingcast. 1408 director Mikael Hafstrom has a new movie out called Slingshot (starring Casey Affleck and Laurence Fishburne) that he views as a sort of cousin to his work on 1408, which provided the perfect excuse to have him come on and reminisce about his experience making 1408. We talk about the casting of John Cusack, Quentin Tarantino's contribution to the movie, how they decided to use...

We're finally tackling Duma Key here at the Kingcast and we brought along two of our most trustworthy friends to help out. Writer and King fanatic Zach Dionne acts as guest co-host and model, streamer, master chef, mother of blind cats, and longtime Kingcast favorite guest Laura Lux returns to talk through this lengthy, complicated book. We fancast a movie version, dive deep into the cruelty that threads through this particular story, and all decide to start a Jerome Wireman fan club.

Our guest this week is the legendary screenwriter Steven E. de Souza, who wrote The Running Man. He was Schwarzenegger's go-to guy, having written Commando before this, and he'd go on to write a little movie by the name of Die Hard. Kingcast favorite Mallory O'Meara (Girly Drinks) sits in the guest co-host seat and helps Vespe interview de Souza about his work with Schwarzenegger, at what point in the process did they figure out Richard Bachman was Stephen King, what went on with all the...

Cuckoo writer/director Tilman Singer is here this week to talk about Stephen King's wild directorial debut: Maximum Overdrive. We chat about kids getting beaned by Coke cans, the differences between the short story and the movie, King's eye as director, and try to figure out what machine would get us if the world ended up... in Maximum Overdrive.

Vespe is joined by Burnie Burns, co-founder of Rooster Teeth and co-host of the current popular podcast Morning Somewhere. While Burnie is famous for his presence in video game-based online entertainment, he also happens to be a big Stephen King fan and agreed to show up and talk about The Long Walk, one of King's best stories that is currently getting its first big screen adaptation. We talk a bit about that, about the casting that has been announced, about how writing under a pseudonym can...

Listener favorite guest, author Stephen Graham Jones (The Indian Lake Trilogy) makes his triumphant return to The Kingcast to discuss King's most recent short story collection You Like It Darker. They're joined by guest co-host Neil McRobert, the host of the Talking Scared podcast, to go story by story through this new collection. The trio find running themes, point our their favorites and least favorites, and examine every story closely in this super-sized episode of The Kingcast. And, of...

Danny Torrance himself, Mr. Dan Lloyd, joins Vespe and guest co-host Mike Flanagan (Doctor Sleep) to talk about his work on Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. While he appeared in a few other things, Lloyd quickly left the Hollywood lifestyle and is now a teacher, but he still made time to come on the show, look back at his fuzzy childhood memories of Kubrick, the late, great Shelley Duvall, Jack Nicholson, Scatman Crothers, and Kubrick's right hand man, Leon Vitali. What are his fondest memories...

Guest co-host Alejandro Brugues (Juan of the Dead, Satanic Hispanics) joins Vespe to chat with the wonderful character actor Bob Gunton, the star of his latest film The Inheritance. Bob has a very special Stephen King connection: He played the dastardly Warden Norton in The Shawshank Redemption. Bob goes in-depth on his work in Shawshank, including his working relationship with director Frank Darabont, why the movie was a blessing for him, and just how often does he get called "obtuse" by...

Today's episode of The Kingcast is a bittersweet one. This marks the very last Scott Wampler hosted episode of the show, which is sad, but it's also kind of fitting that he's leaving us with an episode where he gets to debate the level of redneck Jordy Verrill was with the very funny Brent Terhune, a comedian who turned a lot of heads imitating the worst of the worst angry white guys screaming about social politics from the front seat of their truck. This conversation covers a lot of ground...

Writer/Director Jeff Nichols (Take Shelter, Mud, Midnight Special) joins Vespe to talk about his new film, The Bikeriders starring Tom Hardy, Jodie Comer, and Austin Butler, as well as the unexpected influence Stephen King's work had on his early work, specifically the badass Michael Shannon vehicle Take Shelter. His chosen topic is Night Shift, but he honed in on one particular short story from King's first collection called Night Surf, which serves as a parallel story to The Stand. We talk...

Celebrating the 35th anniversary of Mary Lambert's Pet Sematary, The Kingcast boys are joined by documentary filmmakers John Campopiano and Justin White who crafted Unearthed & Untold: The Path To Pet Sematary, a comprehensive peek behind the curtain on that film. To further their Stephen King bonafides, Campopiano also directed the recent Pennywise: The Story of IT, which chronicles the behind the scenes stories around the 1990 mini-series. In this chat, the boys talk about the...

What's a Stephen King podcast to do when they have two guests each wanting to talk about a different King title? Well, talk about two King titles, of course. That's exactly what happened with this episode which sees Wampler and Vespe chatting up Found Footage Fest's two rapscallions, Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher, about the cannibalistic old people in Holly and a healthy debate on how long we could actually hold our breaths, inspired by Creepshow.