The Radiotopia original mystery fiction podcast Passenger List is being remade as a television series, and has also been renewed for a second season. The eight-episode podcast stars Kelly Marie Tran (Monsterland, Star Wars: The Last Jedi) as Kaitlin Le, a college student whose twin brother is among the missing when a packed commuter flight vanishes en route to New York City. Six months later, the plane's disappearance is still unsolved and its passengers and crew have been officially declared dead. Out of grief, Kaitlin takes up her own investigation.
Passenger List tells its story through the audio equivalent of "found footage," playing recordings of Kaitlin's phone calls, interviews, and candid conversations. Each episode focuses on a different potential lead in Kaitlin's investigation, ranging from one passenger who was involved in human trafficking, to another who might have been exposed to Ebola, to the possibility that the pilot might have suffered from suicidal depression. As Kaitlin gets deeper into the conspiracy-theory weeds, her grip on reality, as well as possibly reality itself, begins to unravel.
The podcast's first season ran in September through October of 2019. It remains one of the most popular fiction podcasts on aggregators such as Podbay a year after its debut, and many critics have praised Tran's anchoring performance as Kaitlin.
Passenger List is being adapted for TV by Weimaraner Republic Pictures, which was launched in 2014 by former Warner Brothers executive Lynn Harris and her husband, Matti Leshem. Weimaraner previously produced the successful 2016 Blake-Lively-vs.-shark movie The Shallows, and is also currently adapting another podcast, the 2019 true-crime hit The Clearing, for TV.
Passenger List is a joint US-UK production, with a surprisingly deep bench for behind-the-mic talent. It was created by John Scott Dryden, who previously wrote and directed the historical fantasy radio drama Tumanbay for BBC Radio; he co-directed Passenger List with Lauren Shippen, creator of the therapy-themed science fiction podcast The Bright Sessions. Editing and sound design on Passenger List was provided by Serial's Mark Henry Phillips. The fifth episode, "Cyberspace," was written by Mara Wilson, who's best known these days for being very good at Twitter and voicing the Faceless Old Woman Who Lives In Your Home on Welcome to Night Vale.
The second season of Passenger List is currently in production, with Dryden, Shippen, Phillips, and Tran confirmed to return. It is scheduled to launch in the spring of 2021, though Dryden has been careful to note that like everything else in this hellscape of a year, COVID-19 restrictions are in play with the production.
Tran's next major voice role is the animated feature The Croods: A New Age from Dreamworks, which is currently scheduled for theatrical release on November 25th.
Source: Deadline