Gunpowder & Sky’s DUST Announces Podcast Series “SEAT 14C” staring Dan Stevens and Danny Trejo

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Gunpowder & Sky’s sci-fi brand, DUST, along with XPRIZE – a non-profit that designs and operates incentive competitions to solve humanity’s grand challenges – announced today that they have partnered to create the second season of DUST’s immersive narrative podcast, “SEAT 14C”. Based on XPRIZE’s science fiction anthology of short stories, “SEAT 14C” is written by iconic, sci-fi writers such as Sheila Finch (The Guild of Xenolinguists), Daniel H. Wilson (The Clockwork Dynasty), Charles Yu (The Third Class Superhero), Kathleen Ann Goonan (Queen City Jazz), Chen Qiufan (translated by Ken Liu) and Justina Robson (Keeping It Real).

DUST signed on Dan Stevens (Beauty And The Beast, “Downton Abbey”), Danny Trejo (Machete, “Sons Of Anarchy”), Alfred Molina (Chocolat, Magnolia), Keith David (Armageddon, The Princess And The Frog), Reid Scott (“Veep”, “The Big C”) and Suzy Nakamura (“Dr. Ken”, Horrible Bosses 2) as lead voice actors for the upcoming audio series.

“After overwhelming requests from our audience to give them audio stories, and the success of our first series, we are doubling down on building out our podcast efforts, led by Stephen Michael,” said Floris Bauer, President, Gunpowder & Sky. “Our next season, consisting of multiple mind bending stories by some of the most talented writers in the genre, perfectly exemplifies what DUST is all about.”

Season one of the podcast series, “DUST Horizons,” premiered in October as an anthology of audio stories by classic science fiction literary visionaries such as Philip K. Dick (Minority Report, Total Recall) and Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles), as well as emerging speculative fiction voices such as Alex Irvine (Supernatural: John Winchester’s Journal), R.K. Nickel (Guilds and Glaives), Alan O’Doherty and Phoebe A. Xavier. In less than 30 days, “DUST Horizons” hit #1 in Apple’s ‘New & Noteworthy’ section, breaking into the Top 100 Podcasts in the US.  Best-selling author of ‘The Martian’ Andy Weir called the series “superb.”  Most recently, the series was selected for Stitcher’s “Best in Fiction 2019” list.

Season two of the series, “SEAT 14C”, revolves around the tales of passengers on an ANA flight that mysteriously lands in San Francisco 20 years in the future. The written anthology was created and spearheaded by Eric Desatnik on behalf of XPRIZE and All Nippon Airways (ANA). Produced in partnership with The Invisible Studios, “DUST Horizons” is available on all major podcast platforms.

Following season one’s success, DUST also announces that Stephen Michael has been appointed Head of Audio. Prior to joining DUST, Michael was a Producer for Gizmodo Media Group, creating content across their numerous sites, including Gizmodo, Earther, The Root and Deadspin. Prior to Gizmodo Media Group, Michael served as Producer for Fusion Media Group where he wrote and produced breaking news, political satire, and evergreen videos for Fusion TV and their digital properties. He began his media career as an Executive Producer at Bare Knuckle Media managing a discretionary fund for acquiring intellectual properties for development in TV and Film.

The launch of DUST Audio comes on the heels of DUST’s channel expansion across OTT platforms, including its recent launch on ‘The Roku Channel’. DUST is in more than 50 million U.S. households and has continued to expand globally, reaching audiences in the UK, Germany, Austria, and Holland on Samsung TV+. In September, DUST Studios announced that they acquired U.S. rights to filmmaker Neasa Hardiman’s critically-acclaimed Irish sci-fi/thriller SEA FEVER following its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. The company will release the film theatrically in the U.S. in early 2020.