iHeartRadio, commercial podcast publisher globally, FlynnPictureCo., Psychopia Pictures, and UpperRoom Productions announced There Be Monsters, an original ten-part narrative sci-fi thriller podcast starring John Boyega (Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker, Detroit) and Emmy, Golden Globe and SAG award winner Darren Criss (American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versache, Hollywood, Royalties).

There Be Monsters, which is produced by Beau Flynn of FlynnPicture Co., Dan Bush of Psychopia Pictures and John Boyega of UpperRoom Production, will be available later this year on the iHeartPodcast Network.

In this new scripted thriller, Boyega plays Jack Locke, the mysterious hero with a vendetta who infiltrates a Silicon Valley body-hacking startup run by an cinematic CEO Max Fuller, played by Criss, whose highly secretive creations promise to enhance human biology in incredible ways – but every drug has a side effect.

iHeartRadio, FlynnPictureCo., Psychopia Pictures and UpperRoom Productions began developing There Be Monsters in November 2019 as part of an expanding slate of immersive “PodFiction” (PodFi) audio dramas. As the creative team was getting ready to fly to London, Atlanta and LA to record the actors in early 2020, the pandemic hit and they were shut down.

Despite the challenges of executing a scripted fictional podcast thriller with a full cast of actors remotely, the creative team was eager to move forward and broke new ground in podcast production in June 2020. The podcast creators and the iHeart team created a completely remote technological process and each cast member was sent a “Studio in a Box,” which included important materials from a professional studio microphone to tutorial videos. These materials enabled the cast to record studio quality “scripted” audio from the safety of their own homes, while still performing together as they connected virtually via teleconference across multiple continents and time zones.

The director, producers and actors would connect virtually daily for six hours to record – and over the course of two weeks the production captured over four hundred pages of material with twenty different actors.

There Be Monsters production just wrapped and is now in post production. The PodFiction series will be distributed by the iHeartPodcast Network which is home to more than 750 original podcasts with over 215 million downloads each month. iHeartRadio Original Podcasts span every category from business, sports, spirituality and technology to entertainment, family, comedy and true crime – and everything in between – making iHeartRadio the largest publisher of podcast content in the world.