Podcast · Film & TV

Script Apart with Al Horner

A podcast about the first-draft secrets behind great movies and TV shows. Each episode, the screenwriter behind a beloved film shares with us their initial screenplay for that movie. We then talk through what changed, what didn’t and why on its journey to the big screen. Hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek.

Typical length: 53 min
Language: English

Latest episode

57 min

'Spider-Man: Brand New Day' Was Almost A Courtroom Comedy

The world has forgotten New York's famous web-slinger in the latest blockbuster outing in the MCU. The irony is, in real life, Peter Parker is a character that pop culture could never forget or cast aside. In today's Script Apart, Erik Sommers and Chris McKenna – the screenwriters behind this summer's all-conquering 'Brand New Day' – contemplate why that is and what makes him so enduring. They also share how Daredevil himself, Matt Murdock, almost had a presence in the movie, as Peter's lawyer during a court case after Spidey becomes the victim of IP theft. Yes, you read that right. Script…

Play episode WhatsApp Download

Earlier episodes 29 most recent

1 hr

How The Writers Of 'Tony' Found A New Recipe For Biopics

Time to delve into screenwriting parts unknown with the writers of one of 2026's most moving coming-of-age dramas. Todd Bartels and Lou Howe are my guests today, discussing in spoiler-filled detail how they cooked up a biopic exploring the teenage life and times of one Anthony Bourdain – author, chef and beloved TV travel host. Discover how they approached the various story threads and characters in the Matt Johnson-directed drama – and what they had to get right in the script to do right by the great man, whose memory could easily have been desecrated. Script Apart is hosted by LA-based…
5 min

Where We've Been...

Five weeks in hospital. Five months of being away from your podcast feeds. Yes, listeners, it's been a weird time. But Script Apart is finally coming back in the coming days! Before new episodes start dropping, here's a quick note from Al, with some a couple of announcements. To submit your questions for our mailbag episodes, click here or email thescriptapartpodcast@gmail.com. You can also reach us on Instagram and TikTok . Got a screenplay that you'd like comprehensive feedback on? Head to scriptapart.com/coverage for notes, one-on-one Zoom development sessions with Al and more.…
1 hr 37 min

Project Hail Mary with Drew Goddard, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller

Ground control to Script Apart listeners – today on the show, we’re blasting off into the cosmos with three formidable sci-fi storytelling talents. Phil Lord and Chris Miller are the writer-director-producer pair responsible for films like Into The Spider-Verse, Across The Spider-Verse, 21 Jump Street, 22 Jump Street, The Lego Movie and Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs. Screenwriter Drew Godard, meanwhile, you may know from movies like Cloverfield, Cabin In The Woods, World War Z and Bad Times At The El Royale, which he also directed. Project Hail Mary is their new film, directed by Lord &…
59 min

Bugonia with Will Tracy

Today on the show – a conversation about Bugonia, with the film’s writer, Will Tracy. Nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay at the upcoming Academy Awards, the Yorgos Lanthimos-directed film is an black comedy thriller about a pharmaceutical CEO, Michelle, played by Emma Stone, who’s kidnapped by a conspiracy theorist, Ted, played by Jesse Plemmons. Ted is convinced that Michelle is not of this planet. He’s insistent that she’s an infiltrator from an alien world, responsible for the collapse of Earth’s bee population and plotting a full-scale invasion. The film’s an adaptation of a South…
46 min

Avatar: Fire and Ash with Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver

Pandora beckons once more, guys. Amanda Silver and Rick Jaffa are back on the show today, spilling secrets from their screenplay for the recent third film in the Avatar franchise, Fire & Ash. The husband-wife duo came on the show around the release of Avatar: The Way of Water a couple of years back, and it’s always a good time chatting with them – I love the unapologetic earnestness of their storytelling and the habit they have of taking huge, billion dollar IP and using them as vehicles for stories about the wonder of nature and what we risk by not showing our environment the appropriate…
59 min

Train Dreams with Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar

Today on the show, our short run of episodes about Oscar 2026 awards contenders continues with a story about grief and growth amid the final flickers of the old West. Train Dreams – adapted from a novella by Dennis Johnson by my guests today, Greg Kwedar and Clint Bentley – takes viewers back to Idaho, 1917. The Spokane International Railroad is under construction and quiet tree logger Robert Granier, played by Joel Edgerton, is one of the labourers paving the way for it. Midway through his life, he experiences an unthinkable tragedy and finds himself plagued by the question: was it karma?…
56 min

Weapons with Zach Cregger

It’s officially that time of year again: Oscar season! We’re now just a few weeks away from the 98th Academy Awards and to celebrate, over the coming days and weeks we’ll be posting conversations about movies in the mix for all sorts of major awards at this year’s ceremony (not just the writing categories). We have of course ticked off a few of the front runners already on the show in recent months - scroll back in your podcast feed to hear our chats with Ryan Coogler about Sinners and Chloe Zhao about Hamnet. But there’s always room for more, right? Which brings us to Weapons –…
46 min

The Plague with Charlie Polinger

The Plague is writer-director Charlie Pollinger’s unflinching portrait of childhood bullying in which the titular contagion is a skin rash that may or may not be real. Set in 2003, at an all-boys summer camp, it follows Ben – played by Everett Blunck – as he enters a group with a clear social hierarchy. At the top is Jake, a smirking bully played by Kayo Martin. Very much at the bottom is an eczema-ridden outcast named Eli, played by Kenny Rasmussen. When Ben shows kindness towards Eli, he finds his footing in the group beginning to shift. What happens next makes for uncomfortable but vital…
52 min

Rental Family with Hikari

In Rental Family, the new Tokyo-set drama starring Brendan Fraser, writer-director Hikari poses the question: “Can fantasies and fictions ever fill the gaps left in our lives by the people we miss; the things that we long for?” It’s a question the filmmaker – real name Mitsuyo Miyazaki – sets up and then resists answering in any declarative way. Instead, the film – about a washed-up American actor named Phillip who begins playing roles in the lives of strangers – treads around the topic with curiosity and empathy. Loneliness and loss, this drama seems to say, are a part of life, and…
48 min

Hamnet with Chloé Zhao and Maggie O'Farrell

To record an episode about Hamnet, the new film from Chloe Zhao, or not to record an episode about Hamnet? That was the question – and a question I answered in a heartbeat when Chloe’s team reached out late last year about chatting with the Nomadland writer-director. The historical drama, starring Jesse Buckley and Paul Mescal, takes viewers inside the anguish of William Shakespeare and his wife, Agnes Hathaway, after the death of one of their children in 1596. In the movie, Shakespeare throws himself into his work as part of his mourning process, resulting in one of the best-loved and most…
50 min

The Smashing Machine with Benny Safdie

The thing about machines is that we expect them to keep chugging on – to never break or falter. In the late 1990s, a mixed martial artist named Mark Kerr found himself struggling to shoulder the weight of that expectation. Mark was a winner – a muscular behemoth beloved by fans of a rising new fighting league, called Ultimate Fighting Championship, or UFC for short. His fans across the world knew little of his agonising behind-the-scenes struggle to keep up that facade, to keep entering the ring week after week, to keep The Smashing Machine as he was nicknamed chugging along – never…
50 min

Urchin with Harris Dickinson

Today on Script Apart – Harris Dickinson: star of films like Babygirl and Triangle of Sadness, John Lennon in the upcoming Beatles biopics from Sam Mendes, and now, a formidable presence on the other side of the camera too. Urchin, the new drama written and directed by Harris, is a feature debut that “I cannot escape and I cannot forget,” to quote the Atomic Kitten song that plays in a pivotal scene. It’s a story that hit close to home for me, quite literally. Harris lives kinda down the street from where I’m from. He shot a lot of Urchin in locations I used to tread every day before moving…
51 min

The Lost Bus with Brad Ingelsby

Today on Script Apart – all aboard a conversation about The Lost Bus, with a writer who’s glued me to my screen time and time again over the last few years. Brad Ingelsby is the creator of Mare Of Eastown starring Kate Winslet from back in the pandemic. He also created this year’s stunning Task – an HBO drama with Mark Ruffalo about an FBI agent investigating a string of violent robberies in rural Delaware County, which is a recurring backdrop to his storytelling – and the Apple TV+ thriller Echo Valley. This year, you might also have caught his collaboration with director Paul Greengrass –…
46 min

Hedda with Nia DaCosta

Aristocratic chaos agent Hedda Gabler isn’t a character. She’s a Rorschach test, and has been for over a century now. Since first appearing in 1891 as the puzzling eponymous protagonist of a play by Henrick Ibsen, audiences have stared into at this recently married woman, driven by domestic suffocation into acts of destruction, and found different meanings, reflective of who they are, reflective of their politics and personal struggles. Is she a beacon of feminist freedom, lashing out at the restraints forced upon her by a misogynistic upper class? Is she a tragic figure, numbed then…
44 min

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery with Rian Johnson

There’s a mystery afoot on today’s episode of Script Apart – and that mystery is how you write a film like Wake Up Dead Man, the new Knives Out movie from my guest today, Rian Johnson. How do you craft a whodunit that’s simultaneously gripping, hilarious and loaded with weighty reflections on religion’s use as a weapon of fear in our current political climate? In the words of Benoit Blanc, it “makes no damn sense” to me, “Compels me, though.” Which is why it was such a treat to ask the man himself. Rian’s a filmmaker who you might know from 2005 high school noir Brick, 2008’s The Brothers…
55 min

The Running Man with Edgar Wright and Michael Bacall

Today on the show – Edgar Wright is back! The Running Man is his new Stephen King adaptation, co-written with Michael Bacall, and on this week’s show, the three of us run for our lives through the reality TV dystopia of that movie, and its creation. The film is a new take on the 1982 novel of the same name, and imagines an America in a state of national calamity. The economy is in ruins. Violence is on the rise. Corporations rule everything. And authoritarian brutality has become primetime entertainment in the form of a gameshow in which cash-strapped contestants are hunted down and…
55 min

Wicked: For Good with Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox

Today on Script Apart, we’re off to see the wizards – the wonderful storytelling wizards, that is, behind the first ever musical we’ve covered on the show. In the early ‘00s, New York-born-and-raised playwright Winnie Holzman was, like the rest of the city, still reeling from the September 11 attacks that claimed 2977 lives. It wasn’t just the attacks themselves that haunted her – it was the division they wrought too. Racial minorities – America’s Muslim population, specifically – were scapegoated and othered. All of a sudden, a war stood on the horizon. And so, Winnie got to work with…
40 min

Nuremberg with James Vanderbilt

The history books will tell you that World War II ended on September 2, 1945. The filmmaker James Vanderbilt, however, will tell there was still one last battle left to fight as the conflict officially drew to a close. It was a battle to be fought not in the trenches but in a court room, with the eyes of the world watching and the stakes were impossibly high. The Nazi party of Germany had been stopped, with the surviving members of their high command arrested. But it wasn’t enough to simply shoot them behind closed doors. They had to be brought to trial and held publicly accountable for the…
39 min

Sinners with Ryan Coogler

How well do you know Ryan Coogler? A couple of years ago, the Oakland-born filmmaker began “to reckon with the fact that the audience doesn’t truly know me at all.” Which might sound strange at first. At that point in his career, the writer-director was all but a household name. His 2013 debut Fruitvale Station had earned him the keys to the Rocky franchise, resulting in 2015’s acclaimed Creed. His next step was to helm a superhero movie that transcended the genre. That film, 2018’s Black Panther, wasn’t just another Marvel movie. It was a bold, operatic, Kendrick Lamar-soundtracked moment…
1 hr 14 min

Ballad of a Small Player with Rowan Joffé and Edward Berger

The Festival of Hungry Ghosts is upon us – and today on Script Apart, we’re betting it all on black. Ballad Of A Small Player is the casino-set new drama from director Edward Berger and writer Rowan Joffe, adapted from the novel of the same name by author Lawrence Osborne. It follows Colin Farrell as a character who introduces himself as Lord Boyle – an aristocratic charmer, who we soon come to learn is seriously, existentially adrift amid the slot machines and baccarat tables of Macau’s gambling houses. As Boyle’s true self – and name – is revealed, we tumble with him down a neon-splashed,…
1 hr 17 min

Play Dirty with Shane Black

Today, Shane Black is back, returning to Script Apart four years since his last appearance on the show! His new film Play Dirty is a heist movie that in some ways he’s been waiting his whole life to make. Fans of his will know that Shane often centres stories around flawed male characters who are informed by the pulpy novels he grew up reading. After decades creating his own spins on the literary tough guys in those books – such as Riggs in Lethal Weapon and Harry Lockhart in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang – this new film goes straight to the source, directly adapting one of the novelists who inspired…
53 min

Good Fortune with Aziz Ansari

Aziz Ansari is a comedian who seems to always have been intrigued by the idea of status, and the stranglehold it can put people in. You might not immediately think of it when you think of his work, but the 42-year-old seems drawn to dreamers and strivers and people who yearn to transcend their station in life, finding comedy and drama in the gap between what they have and what they covet. In Parks & Recreation, the hit sitcom that made him a household name, Aziz played Tom Haverford, a small-town entrepreneur obsessed with expensive colognes, designer clothes and living a luxury existence;…
44 min

The Life of Chuck with Mike Flanagan

Put down your briefcase and put on your dancing shoes, everybody, because today on Script Apart – a podcast about the first-draft secrets of great movies and TV shows – Mike Flanagan is back, tap-dancing through the end times with me in celebration of The Life Of Chuck. As I put it in my feature for Empire Magazine earlier this year, when I covered the movie’s theatrical release, the phrase “feel-good” isn’t often associated with the apocalypse. Nor, to be honest, with Mike’s work in general, as one of the streaming era’s premier fright-masters – a writer-director whose output so far have…
52 min

All Of You with Brett Goldstein and William Bridges

If a technology existed that matched you with your soul mate – the one true person you’re destined to be with – would you take it? Would it lead you to your happily-ever-after? Or is love too vast and complicated a thing to be pared down to a science like that? These are the questions posed by All Of You, a new romantic drama by our guests today, William Bridges and Brett Goldstein. William is a writer-director you may well know from his contributions to the shows like Black Mirror and Stranger Things. Brett, meanwhile, is the writer-performer known for Ted Lasso, in which he plays hardman…
53 min

Alien: Earth with Noah Hawley

In space, no one can hear you scream. On Earth, however, around 9pm for the last seven or eight Tuesdays, you may well hear some shrieks of terror, emanating from nearby apartment windows – all thanks to one of the boldest and blood-soaked sci-fi shows to grace the small screen in recent memory. Alien: Earth is the new show from our guest today, Noah Hawley and it’s a masterclass in philosophical sci-fi. You probably don’t need to be told of the cultural significance of the Alien franchise, which began back in 1979 with Ridley Scott’s tale of a crew of space truckers hunted by an…
1 hr 30 min

Sorry, Baby with Eva Victor

Sorry Baby is a movie that makes no apologies. No apologies for how moved you’ll be by its depiction of a character (and her cat) working through their trauma in a wintry Massachusetts town. No apologies how for much you’ll laugh in a film that for all extents and purposes is a tale of sexual assault. And no apologies for how ambitious it is – playing with time and playing with chronology. Which is why we’re excited to welcome onto the show this week, the one and only Eva Victor, the film’s writer, director and star. Until this impressive debut feature, Eva was best known for a series of…
59 min

Adolescence with Jack Thorne

Where do we go and what happens next after the dust at long last settles on an experience that sent tremors through a community? That’s the question pondered in the final moments of Adolescence, the recent smash hit Netflix drama, which last night swept the 2025 Emmys. It’s also, in part, the question at the heart of our conversation today with the show’s co-writer – BAFTA-winning screenwriter and playwright Jack Thorne, who joins Al not just to discuss the show’s creation, but to wade through the impact of this show that shook Britain. Adolescence stirred real-life change in a way few TV…
1 hr 1 min

Say Nothing with Joshua Zetumer

Get ready for another in our Emmy Awards nominees mini-series. Today, Joshua Zetumer, showrunner of Say Nothing, joins us to break down his riveting adaptation of the book of the same name by Patrick Radden Keefe, which hit screens last year. Say Nothing offered a stunningly well-realised recreation of a tinderbox time on the streets of Belfast, Northern Ireland. Spanning three decades, it followed two real-life sisters – Dolours and Marian Price – whose involvement in the 1973 bombing of London’s Old Bailey as soldiers in the provisional Irish Republican Army saw them sentenced to life…
1 hr 16 min

Dying For Sex with Kim Rosenstock

Today on Script Apart, the next in our run of conversations with nominees for this year’s Emmy Awards. Dying For Sex – created by Liz Meriwether and my guest today, Kim Rosenstock – is an adaptation of the popular Wondry podcast series of the same name about one Molly Kochan – a writer diagnosed with terminal cancer, who documents her sexual reawakening in the aftermath of that diagnosis. Played in the show by Michelle Williams, Molly leaves her husband and embarks on an odyssey of eroticism that forces her to confront a childhood trauma that has stalked her her entire adult life. Did I…

About Script Apart with Al Horner

Script Apart with Al Horner is a English film & tv podcast from Script Apart. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.

Publisher: Script Apart
Language: English
Category: Film & TV
Typical length: 53 min
Feed: RSS — paste into any podcast app
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1518622561
Website: redcircle.com/shows/script-apart-with-al-horner

RSS feed Apple Podcasts Website

More English film & tv 6

Take it with you

The Melo app keeps playing with the screen off, works in the car and on your watch, wakes you to your station, and browses the whole catalogue offline. Free, no ads, no account.

Get it on Google Play

Script Apart with Al Horner

Latest episode

'Spider-Man: Brand New Day' Was Almost A Courtroom Comedy

Earlier episodes 29 most recent

How The Writers Of 'Tony' Found A New Recipe For Biopics

Where We've Been...

Project Hail Mary with Drew Goddard, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller

Bugonia with Will Tracy

Avatar: Fire and Ash with Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver

Train Dreams with Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar

Weapons with Zach Cregger

The Plague with Charlie Polinger

Rental Family with Hikari

Hamnet with Chloé Zhao and Maggie O'Farrell

The Smashing Machine with Benny Safdie

Urchin with Harris Dickinson

The Lost Bus with Brad Ingelsby

Hedda with Nia DaCosta

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery with Rian Johnson

The Running Man with Edgar Wright and Michael Bacall

Wicked: For Good with Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox

Nuremberg with James Vanderbilt

Sinners with Ryan Coogler

Ballad of a Small Player with Rowan Joffé and Edward Berger

Play Dirty with Shane Black

Good Fortune with Aziz Ansari

The Life of Chuck with Mike Flanagan

All Of You with Brett Goldstein and William Bridges

Alien: Earth with Noah Hawley

Sorry, Baby with Eva Victor

Adolescence with Jack Thorne

Say Nothing with Joshua Zetumer

Dying For Sex with Kim Rosenstock

About Script Apart with Al Horner

More English film & tv 6

Take it with you