In the race to turn podcasts into TV shows, podcasts are winning

Eli Horowitz and Micah Blumberg never intended homecoming TV show will happen.

when they were created homecoming, the podcast from Gimlet Media, their sole goal was to create a great fantasy podcast, to tell a creative story in the midst of burgeoning audio fiction. And they did it. homecoming It was a hit with critics – as it is in the podcast world – and fans. Horowitz and Bloomberg have also, inadvertently, made something bigger in the eyes of TV studios: a potential franchise. Two years after the podcast was discontinued, its TV counterpart premiered on Amazon Prime.

Podcasts have been adapted for television before, however homecoming something different. He has Sam Esmail, one of the industry’s hottest directors, behind the camera, and Julia Roberts in front of him. It was shown for the first time Strong decisive approval It received three Golden Globe nominations. But turning the audio-only experience into a high-profile TV show wasn’t the culmination of the audio-to-TV experience. homecoming Not an end point, it’s a beginning, the culmination of a new wave of shows that will soon flood TV screens.

Jeffrey Cranor, co-founder of the podcast Welcome to Night ValeTells the edge. The podcast, which launched in 2012, is currently in development for an FX show.

The podcast remains a file A steadily growing cultural phenomenonMore familiar to households than any previous year, studios have taken notice. They devoured possessions left and right, unlike in the comic books several years earlier. The first shows to hit the screen were largely based on creative personalities, such as HBO 2 queen queens, featuring Jessica Williams and Phoebe Robinson ; Now defunct Seeso My brother, my brother, and mefrom McElroy Brothers; And Maroon, based on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast. Property grabs still happen, but it’s headed in a new direction.

Among the podcasts that have been picked up for television in the past few years knowledgeAnd Isn’t it dead?And Bright sessionsAnd TanisAnd The unexpected disappearance of Mars PatelAnd limetownAnd black straps. While the plots of these shows vary greatly, one thing they have in common, and the thing that separates them from the aforementioned podcasts that made their way to television, is that they are story-driven.

Gimlet Media, the parent company that published homecoming, they noticed this trend early on, and formed an entirely new department in their company to counter it. It was their first experience in the field of audio broadcasting on television Alex, Inca show on ABC starring Zach Braff, based on the life of Gimlet co-founder Alex Blumberg.

“Over time, we realized that it wasn’t satisfying financially and creatively,” says Chris Gilberti, Gimlet’s president of film and TV. “We wanted to link these products to two different products. Having gone through this learning experience, and seeing a talented team in it Alex, Inc They put a show together, we felt like we had the pieces to make our own, and that’s the story homecoming. “

homecoming is a psychological thriller about Heidi Bergman, a case worker for the mysterious Homecoming Initiative, and one of her patients, veteran soldier and Initiative volunteer Walter Cruz. The show switches back and forth between the past – during Walter and Heidi’s time on the project – and the present, which sees Heidi working as a waitress in a town in Florida. The two timelines gradually converge, as the past reveals the present and vice versa, with a conclusion that leaves the listener ready to dive straight into a planned second season. (homecoming It was initially picked up for two seasons, but a second season premiere date hasn’t been revealed yet.)

Although Bloomberg and Horowitz say television was never the planned end game, the showcasing potential of this format was immediately undeniable. It’s tightly written, the characters are well developed, and they’re really in for a scene.

This is also true of many of the fictional or series podcasts in development. Bright sessionsfor example, mostly centers around a therapist and her various clients who are supernaturally gifted, while limetown, imaginary seriesA hardcore show about a reporter trying to uncover the truth about a small town, it’s an interview-heavy drama. Welcome to Night Vale, In the meantime, it’s a mix of old soap operas and radio shows with a slew of colorful characters living in its world.

“They really broke it down into characters and how they interact in the scene,” Horowitz says. “You’re testing it at a higher level than a book or article, and it’s easier to imagine or see how people will respond to it in a story. I think that’s attractive to people who want to test it at a lower cost.”

In short, there is less work involved during the translation process. Studios don’t have to invest as much time in world building if the creator has already built the world for them, complete with live characters. It’s ready content. As an added bonus, these current worlds come with existing audiences.

“if Night Valley It gets made into a TV show, there are already hundreds of thousands of listeners who will keep listening to it,” Cranor says. “Same with a Marvel graphic novel or popular novel. Podcasts In the last 10 years or so, the audience has really expanded, and so has the podcast genre, as there is now a really rich fantasy podcast community.”

All of these sudden development deals come with a big asterisk. As with any development option, the rights agreement does not guarantee that a series will appear in reality. Development is just the starting line, and the road to the finish is a race without any specific length or path.

“When you’re a playwright and you want to produce a play in a theater, and you submit a script or talk to a theater, you work with them, and there’s something that happens very quickly in that yes/no process,” Cranor says. “Someone puts it best: in publishing, The answer is always no until it’s yes, and on television, the answer is always yes until it’s no.”

Justin McElroy, the older brother of the McElroy family empire, which includes shows like Adventure ZoneAnd a sawAnd amazingAnd SchmanersAnd My brother, my brother and meAnd He says it took the better part of a year for the My brother, my brother and me Even show that you have a specific vision. The show has gone through several iterations, including one based on pranks and practical jokes, which he didn’t feel summed up at all for him and his siblings. It wasn’t until they found producer J.D. Amato, who ran The Chris Gethard Show and the Chair Show On Comedy Central, the show really came together.

“It was like trying to find a new limb, which is just a slight exaggeration,” McElroy says.

This is the hardest and most important part of adapting any podcast for the screen, whether fiction or non-fiction: finding a knowledgeable proponent, writer, director, or producer who doesn’t want to put on a show just trading on the popularity of a podcast, but truly believes in the creators’ vision.

“with Night Valley“The only thing we were working on was our lives, and we didn’t want to sell it out and lose control of it,” says Cranor. It wasn’t until they met FX and writer Jennifer Hutchison that they felt really comfortable moving forward with a series.

to homecomingHorowitz, and Bloomberg, the person who shared their vision was Ismail, director Mr. Robot. Esmail says he was hooked by the show’s similarity to paranoid 1970s thrillers, and brought it up three times. The opportunity to get a podcast on TV was too good to pass up.

Horowitz, Blumberg, and Ismail all say that when they first met, they were almost immediately on the same page about introducing homecoming for tv. They all agreed that they wanted to preserve the series’ intimacy and character-driven nature, rather than shoehorn in cinematic ensembles that would take what makes the podcast special. Esmail says they were “surgical” in their approach to each episode—what to leave out, what to take, what to add, and what not to add—to ensure the show stayed true to its podcast roots.

One of the ways they maintained fidelity to the series was by leaving the sessions between Heidi and Walter virtually untouched. On the TV series, those sessions are taken almost verbatim from the podcast — same lines, even the same inflection. This was more than just fan service. These sessions are the heart of the show, giving it the intimacy that Ismail cherishes.

“There were so many times on podcasts where you’d hear Walter in session with Heidi telling a story from his days in the war,” Ismail says. “It goes back to that intimacy that I keep hitting—which felt like a mistake going into Afghanistan and showing those sequences, because those scenes were really about how Heidi and Walter interact.”

“I think the show is weird in that there are no fights or chases or explosions,” Bloomberg adds. “There was definitely some expectation that we were going to open up the world and show some violence and do some physical action to go against all the talk and psychology, but for us, [the psychology] It was exciting stuff.”

at least, homecoming is proof positive that it is possible to translate a fictional podcast into a great TV show, given the right resources and direction. Perhaps this single point of success is enough to precipitate the free-for-all that is already happening between studios and producers.

This will also undoubtedly change the current landscape of fantasy podcasts, as studios continue to invade this still relatively nascent landscape, in search of a golden story. Up until this point, fiction podcasts have been somewhat experimental, with authors and writers trying to find new, less expensive ways to tell the stories they want to tell. Their quality and success (whatever that was measured) always varied, but they were always at least reliable in their attempts. That may change, however, if the audio-to-TV craze continues apace.

“If you’re a TV writer, and you’re trying to find a new way to get attention for your story, you have one way, the old-fashioned way, you send out a specific script and try to get something new,” Cranor says. “Or you have a podcast, where there are people who are hungry for new stories, and you do it that way to see if She was going to go off. Now you have the attention of people looking to buy stories and can listen for themselves and see how players and characters interact. I think there’s a really cool streak to working there as a builder.”

There’s nothing inherently wrong with creating podcasts with Hollywood in mind. Ideally, this new path to screens would help a diverse group of creatives break into an industry that says it desperately needs diversity, but doesn’t seem to be. Find any talent. (Although the vast majority of podcasts in development so far have come from white male creators.) However, the opportunity does exist, in theory. Anyone with a story to tell and a computer to record it can put that story into the ether. People are listening more than ever, especially those with the power and capital to put on a show, and if the right person listens at the right time, who knows what could happen?

“This is America,” McElroy says. “Everyone thinks they’re going to get a TV show.”