The Projection Booth

A rejected horror-short application turned into a movie about what happens when retirees run the set. Sean Cisterna couldn't find funding for The Rug (2025), so he pitched a New Horizons for Seniors grant, recruited a crew in their 70s, 80s and 90s, and filmed the chaos as Silver Screamers (2025), a Fantastic Fest world premiere reaching U.S. viewers on BloodStream November 6. Cisterna joins Mike to talk about the 96-year-old who raised her hand first, an insurer that refused to cover an 80-year-old camera operator, a rug brought to life by a marionette rig, Super 8 lifer Sonny at last handling an Alexa, and why the short plays free online as the doc's companion piece. His message: imagination doesn't retire.

Follow Silver Screamers at the film's official page.

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The Projection Booth is part of the Weirding Way Media podcast network. Explore more of our shows at http://weirdingwaymedia.com.

A fisherwoman the village won't let alone commissions a basket weaver to build her a husband, and the husband is Alexander Skarsgård, worn as ten 3D-printed pieces of woven prosthetic with no CG replacement. Wicker (2026) is a new fable from directors Eleanor Wilson and Alex Huston Fischer, fresh from its Sundance premiere and opening nationwide October 30, with Olivia Colman, Peter Dinklage, Elizabeth Debicki and Richard E. Grant in a village where loneliness, marriage and gossip are funny because they are true. Eleanor and Alex, the pair behind Save Yourselves! (2020), join Mike to talk about 18 months with Weta Workshop, adapting Ursula Wills's short story, casting the village with comedians, and a test-screening crowd that went to war over the tailor's wife.

Follow Wicker on Instagram and visit the film's official website.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-projection-booth--5513239/support.

Become a supporter of The Projection Booth at http://www.patreon.com/projectionbooth 

The Projection Booth is part of the Weirding Way Media podcast network. Explore more of our shows at http://weirdingwaymedia.com.

Forget the cabin in the woods: this coven comes for you at home on Halloween night. The Heretiks (2026), a Fantastic Fest world premiere headed to Sitges, follows renegade witch Cai (Kimberly Epstein) as she protects two sisters and a friend from her former coven, led by the terrifying Neve (Tess Williams). Director Gregg Bishop of Siren (2016) and Dance of the Dead (2008) spent ten years shopping the script by Luke Piotrowski and Ben Collins.

Mike talks with Bishop, Epstein, Williams, and Josie Wert, who plays Ada, about the concept trailer that finally won a green light, 26 night shoots, two weeks of rehearsal, child actors on strict curfews, real suburban locations near Bishop's hometown, handprint makeup effects, and watching it with a Fantastic Fest crowd.

Follow Gregg Bishop on Instagram.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-projection-booth--5513239/support.

Become a supporter of The Projection Booth at http://www.patreon.com/projectionbooth 

The Projection Booth is part of the Weirding Way Media podcast network. Explore more of our shows at http://weirdingwaymedia.com.

What if detention were group therapy? Detention (2026), a quirky teen comedy from Washington State's Bainbridge Island, swaps the usual punishment for something harder: a room of kids made to talk about what is really happening behind closed doors. Writer-director Emma Cameron, who co-directed with her husband Mark Cameron and also plays the sleep-deprived Dr. Messerschmitt, joins Mike after the film's Pasadena International Film Festival screening and a summer theatrical run, just as it arrives on Amazon Prime and Apple TV. She traces the idea to The Breakfast Club (1985) and a job on a school mental-health commercial, explains why she cast 90 percent of the film in Washington, how she recast a major role two weeks before shooting, and how two nights of magic-hour light captured the final scene at the water's edge.

Follow Detention on Instagram and visit the film's official website.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-projection-booth--5513239/support.

Become a supporter of The Projection Booth at http://www.patreon.com/projectionbooth 

The Projection Booth is part of the Weirding Way Media podcast network. Explore more of our shows at http://weirdingwaymedia.com.

A body missing for 36 years turns up at a gruesome crime scene, and the daughter who goes looking learns her father's past is much worse than she thought. The Cycle (2026), a Fantastic Fest world premiere starring Deborah Ann Woll and Jeffrey Donovan, comes from Jordan Downey, the filmmaker behind The Head Hunter (2018). Stephen King has already called it special, and it arrives on Shudder October 23.

Mike talks with Downey about the idea that consumed him and co-writer Kevin Stewart through the pandemic, protecting a twist as long as possible, shooting in weathered coastal Oregon locations, a body farm built from medical-grade bones, a life-cast practical corpse, and the Critters (1986) love-letter short he made hoping to land the reboot.

Follow Jordan Downey on Instagram.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-projection-booth--5513239/support.

Become a supporter of The Projection Booth at http://www.patreon.com/projectionbooth 

The Projection Booth is part of the Weirding Way Media podcast network. Explore more of our shows at http://weirdingwaymedia.com.

A bus explodes in downtown Hong Kong on Valentine's Day, and the trail of wreckage leads to two young men nobody was watching. We're Nothing at All (2026), a festival drama that has played Hong Kong and Udine's Far East Film Festival, intercuts a forensic investigation with the love story and desperation of a gay couple pushed toward disaster by poverty. Herman Yau, the Hong Kong veteran behind Taxi Hunter (1993), directs.

Mike talks with Yau and stars Anson Kong of the boy band Mirror, who plays Fai, and Ansonbean, who plays Ike, about 40 years in the Hong Kong film industry, why the pace of local cinema has slowed, a script written in three months and shot in 16 days, a tunnel scene where the actors really slapped each other, and the risk of offending audiences.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-projection-booth--5513239/support.

Become a supporter of The Projection Booth at http://www.patreon.com/projectionbooth 

The Projection Booth is part of the Weirding Way Media podcast network. Explore more of our shows at http://weirdingwaymedia.com.

In 1988, a Soviet underground rock hero flew west to record an album for CBS, and Michael Apted's cameras went with him. The Long Way Home (1989) follows Boris Grebenshchikov and his band Aquarium from studio sessions in New York and Montreal back to a Leningrad where glasnost was still a hope, with Dave Stewart, Annie Lennox, Chrissie Hynde, and Crosby, Stills and Nash along for the ride. Now it's back: a 4K remaster built from the only surviving 16mm print premiered at the Museum of Modern Art in January 2026, with a new epilogue on Grebenshchikov's exile.

Mike talks with producer Steven Lawrence about bringing the film back to the screen. Lawrence got his start in New York public-access television, filmed CBGB bands in the 1970s, produced long-form programming at MTV, and co-founded Link TV. He and editor Susanne Rostock supervised the remaster and co-directed the new ending.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-projection-booth--5513239/support.

Become a supporter of The Projection Booth at http://www.patreon.com/projectionbooth 

The Projection Booth is part of the Weirding Way Media podcast network. Explore more of our shows at http://weirdingwaymedia.com.

A man comes home from an alien abduction to find a tenant living in his house. Into the Sky (2026), a Fantastic Fest world premiere starring Sam Richardson, Sofia Black-D'Elia, and David Cross, pairs that premise with classic rom-com bones: the meet-cute, the estranged spouse, the big wedding. Drew Mylrea and Evan Wolf Buxbaum make their feature directing debut with an idea a decade in the making.

Mike talks with them about a script that sat for six years after Evan called it terrible, a wedding scene inspired by the barn where Drew officiated Evan's own, cast improv that changed how they shot, a fruit-based code for settling disputes behind the monitor, and hoisting actors skyward on wires during short Catskill summer nights.

Follow Into the Sky on Instagram and visit the film's official website for the merch raffle.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-projection-booth--5513239/support.

Become a supporter of The Projection Booth at http://www.patreon.com/projectionbooth 

The Projection Booth is part of the Weirding Way Media podcast network. Explore more of our shows at http://weirdingwaymedia.com.

Nothing says team-building like a trap. Corporate Retreat (2026), a horror comedy that had its world premiere at BIFFF in Brussels, lures ambitious young executives to a luxury desert estate where the trust games turn deadly. Director Aaron Fisher follows his debut feature Inside the Rain (2019) with a cast that includes Odeya Rush, Rosanna Arquette, and Alan Ruck.

Mike talks with Fisher and actress Ellen Toland, who plays COO Aubrey Johnson, about a one-room thriller in the spirit of Saw (2004) born from his father's 2008 financial collapse, blocking the carnage with chalk drawings and action figures in a backyard, Gary J. Tunnicliffe's practical gore, parodying summer-camp trust falls after consultants quoted $250,000, and a Brussels crowd that treated the premiere like a midnight-movie party.

Follow Aaron Fisher on Instagram and follow Ellen Toland on Instagram.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-projection-booth--5513239/support.

Become a supporter of The Projection Booth at http://www.patreon.com/projectionbooth 

The Projection Booth is part of the Weirding Way Media podcast network. Explore more of our shows at http://weirdingwaymedia.com.

Gunshots on Lioness aren't supposed to sound like movie gunshots. Supervising sound editor George Haddad, an Emmy winner for The Studio, talks with Mike about building Taylor Sheridan's CIA drama from authentic sources: researching how a specific weapon sounds in a specific place, recording a friend's Rivian for another series, and cleaning dialogue so viewers never reach for the subtitles.

The conversation also goes back to Berklee, drumming, and a childhood Star Wars (1977) moment, then to DVD-era restorations of Highlander II: The Quickening (1991) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), where Clint Eastwood returned to re-record lines, and to Jackass Number Two (2006) versus House of 1000 Corpses (2003).

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-projection-booth--5513239/support.

Become a supporter of The Projection Booth at http://www.patreon.com/projectionbooth 

The Projection Booth is part of the Weirding Way Media podcast network. Explore more of our shows at http://weirdingwaymedia.com.