Rok (Urban Kuntarič), a lonely gas station clerk, steals a bicycle and ends up sidekick to its owner, The Girl (Lara Wolf), a blank-eyed, scarred vigilante who may or may not be a superhero. Luka Marčetić's Girl in the Night (2026) just took Best Picture in Fantastic Fest's Main Competition, and Mike talks with Marčetić and Wolf about the Slovenian deadpan charmer.Marčetić traces the film from a one-line logline and a scrapped romantic comedy to a tone shaped by Napoleon Dynamite, Yorgos Lanthimos, and Riley Stearns. The pair recall 20 winter nights of whispered filming in Ljubljana, the one-inch difference between "puppy eyes" and menace, and blinks erased in post. Plus: a ferret fight staged with a puppet, inspired by Bela Lugosi's rubber-octopus wrestling in Ed Wood, and a story rewritten in the edit.Follow the film on Instagram at @dekle_noci.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 

Sirens wail, smoke drifts past the hedgerows, and inside a tidy English cottage two grown adults earn "nifties" for good behavior. Scott Tinkham and Michael Woloson's darkly comic feature debut, Littermates (2026), turns a vague apocalypse into a strange, tender story of siblinghood, and Mike talks with both directors about how they pulled it off.Friends since film school, the pair recount reverse-engineering the script around a borrowed country house and three performers they know best, including Liam (Joey Bader), a character Bader had been doing around the house for years. They also relive shooting the entire film on one hulking Panavision zoom lens, with a tripod so heavy the cast had to help haul it.Winner of the Special Jury Prize at the Manchester Film Festival and the Narrative Feature Audience Award at Dances With Films LA, Littermates screened at Fantastic Fest before opening at Alamo Drafthouse on November 6. Learn more at littermatesfilm.com and follow @littermatesfilm.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 

Lou Ferrigno talks with Mike about Hard Redemption (2026), the martial-arts action thriller from director-writer-star Jino Kang and co-director Christine Lam. The film plays out a Die Hard-in-a-classroom premise: a GED teacher with a hidden past (Kang) has to fight off a San Francisco gang holding his students hostage, one grudge match at a time through the school's hallways to a gymnasium showdown.Ferrigno, best known as television's original Hulk, joins the cast in a supporting role opposite David Kurzhal, Jessie Pettit, James Aaron Oh, and Mikaila Maei. Mike talks with Ferrigno about the film, his role in it, and his long career in genre filmmaking. Hard Redemption is available now.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 

Agata Trzebuchowska joins Mike for a Special Report on Sick (2026), her feature debut as writer and director, fresh off winning Best Director in Fantastic Fest's Next Wave competition. Sent to the Polish countryside to nurse their ailing grandmother (Monika Niemczyk), sixteen-year-old Maks (Konrad Kąkol) and his older sister Emma (Katarzyna Łubik) feel the summer heat bend their bond into something neither of them can name.Best known as the novice nun at the heart of Paweł Pawlikowski's Oscar-winning Ida, Trzebuchowska talks about moving behind the camera, from her Sundance short Heat to the stalled project whose frustrations gave birth to Sick. She digs into building dread through suggestion rather than explanation, guiding Kąkol and Łubik to performances that earned their own special mention from the Fantastic Fest jury, and the double meaning of that title.Touch me, I'm sick. 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 

Rob St. Mary and Jedidiah Ayres join Mike for The Salton Sea (2002), D.J. Caruso's meth-fueled noir starring Val Kilmer in a dual role: junkie informant Danny Parker, who's secretly Tom Van Allen, a grieving trumpet player hunting the corrupt cops who murdered his wife. Chasing them drags Danny deep into the orbit of Pooh-Bear (Vincent D'Onofrio), a nose-less speed freak who'll snort anything, and Jimmy the Finn (Peter Sarsgaard), closing in as his double life unravels.Screenwriter Tony Gayton and director D.J. Caruso join Mike to talk making the film — Gayton on writing the script and his run-ins with John Milius, Caruso on landing D'Onofrio for Pooh-Bear and his kinetic, music-video style. Rob and Jed dig into Amir Mokri's cinematography, Thomas Newman's score, and how the real, decaying Salton Sea — once California's desert Riviera, now a toxic ghost resort — becomes the film's rotting metaphor. Part of our Val Kilmer retrospective.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 

Nick Simon talks with Mike about What Happened to Doris? (2026), his film revisiting the real case that inspired The Entity (1982). Doris Bither was a Culver City single mother whose reports of violent supernatural attacks drew paranormal investigators from UCLA and became one of the most documented hauntings in American history. Simon developed the project with the blessing of Doris's real son, Brian, adjusting details to honor her experience while centering the story on her fight to be believed rather than the haunting itself.Simon talks about pursuing Heather Graham for the lead with a personal letter laying out his vision, working with Mimi Rogers and the cast, and building scares practically on an indie budget with creature designers Mario Torres Jr. and Roxanne McDaniel. Mike and Simon get into what drew him to Doris's story specifically, and why he wanted her perspective, not the entity's, to drive the film.What Happened to Doris? premiered at Fantastic Fest 2026.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 

Peter M. Hoffman talks with Mike about Karmic Winds: Reflections from the "Smartest Guy in Hollywood", his memoir written largely in pencil during an eight-month prison sentence for a tax-credit case a federal judge had already ruled legal. Hoffman traces his path from Yale tax law into the movie business, tax-engineering Superman for Alex Salkind, working with manager Albert Grossman, and untangling Dolly Parton's publishing split from Porter Wagoner so she could reclaim her catalog outright.They dig into Carolco, the independent studio Hoffman built with Mario Kassar and Andy Vajna, from the capital-gains maneuver that got Marlon Brando paid on Superman to landing Terminator 2 and Basic Instinct as back-to-back worldwide number-one grossers. Hoffman talks Verhoeven's instincts on Basic Instinct's ending, the collapsed Crusades project, buying Joe Eszterhas's script amid protest, and favorites like The Believer, Stander, and Jacob's Ladder.Karmic Winds is out now; Hoffman's next project adapts The Master and Margarita.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 

Director Jessica Earnshaw talks with Mike about Baby Doe (2025), her documentary on Gail, tried decades after a newborn's 1993 death, and the phenomenon of pregnancy denial. Earnshaw traces her path from photojournalism, including a National Geographic essay on aging in prison, to her debut Jacinta, and how the film began with Emily Weaver's case before an appeals delay sent her searching for another, leading her to Gail.They dig into building trust as a nearly one-woman crew, archival footage pulled from prosecutors' files, decades-old news coverage, and Gail's own home movies, and denial as a survival mechanism. Earnshaw talks about the case's all-male jury, how Gail's Baptist upbringing and shame around premarital sex fed her silence, and how screenings in Birmingham, Alabama drew unexpected empathy from Christian audiences.Baby Doe streams on Apple TV, Amazon Prime, and Fandango. Follow at Baby Doe Film and @jess_ernshaw 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 

Director Lena Khan talks with Mike about Best of the Best (2026), her Bollywood-fusion dance comedy for Netflix from writers Hasan Minhaj and Prashanth Venkataramanujam. Khan traces her path from UCLA activism and music videos to her debut The Tiger Hunter, and how Minhaj and Venkataramanujam brought her on after asking for script notes and liking what she said.They dig into the rewrite process, Khan's push for tonal consistency across the film's teen-comedy, dance-movie, and female-friendship strands, and her call to trade a boy-subplot for a betrayal that lands harder. Khan talks choreographers Phillip Chbeeb and Mackenzie Dustman, cinematographer Adam Carbone, shooting dance numbers in a single day versus Bollywood's usual five or six, and calibrating the "15% Bollywood" spectacle without tipping into Glee. She also talks working with Rizwan Manji, mining her own friendships to crack a character, and what's next with her project Baby.Best of the Best is now streaming on Netflix. 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 

Cassie Workman talks with Mike about her new horror-comedy series, Cassie Workman is Witchy AF, a puppet-and-drawings deep dive into occult history that plays, in Mike's words, like "a demented kid show." Workman traces her path from stand-up in Perth, Australia, and a run as head writer on The Aaron Chen Show, to fusing comedy and the occult into a series she finally pitched after years on the back burner, landing with manager Lawrence and Etch's Will Battersby and Phil.They dig into the puppet cast, including Ben Russell's King Grimsquawk, built from one note ("Just do Werner Herzog as a bird"), the brutal two-week Asbury Park, New Jersey shoot (40 pages a day, 4 a.m. calls), and Workman's partnership with producer Lily Wachowski, whom she met by writing her a fan letter. She also talks up the mostly-women, largely-queer cast and crew, the Asbury Park locals who turned out as demons and extras, and Edinburgh Fringe.Find Cassie Workman on Instagram: @TheCassieWorkman.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