#there is a novel I think after the first two seasons of limetown

[c-grace]

My unfortunate soul has spiraled into the world of podcasts, where I binge shows despite being in the verge of collapsing from unfinished assignments.

I started with Case 63, then to Limetown and now I'm currently listening to The Black Tapes.

[recentnews18-blog]

New Post has been published on https://shovelnews.com/how-an-east-tennessee-natives-podcast-limetown-got-a-tv-series-with-jessica-biel/

How an East Tennessee native's podcast, 'Limetown,' got a TV series with Jessica Biel

CLOSE

Actress Jessica Biel’s first audition involved her rolling a potato chip into her mouth – but did she get the job? (Sept. 27) AP

Athens native Zack Akers, left, and Skip Bronkie are the creators of the “Limetown” podcast, which is set in East Tennessee. A TV adaptation with Jessica Biel is now in the works.(Photo: Alison Grasso)

Athens native Zack Akers can recall the moment he knew that his and business partner Skip Bronkie’s podcast, “Limetown,” changed his life.

Akers was watching a movie with his parents in his hometown in 2015 when Bronkie texted him about “Limetown” being featured on the iTunes New and Noteworthy podcast homepage.

“I just remember staring at it (the phone) and just going numb,” said Akers. “It was one of those moments where I knew my life had changed, but I didn’t really know how. I just knew that it had happened.”

Soon after, “Limetown” became the No. 1 podcast on iTunes, according to Akers. It tells the fictional story of a Tennessee town in White County whose people disappear and a journalist’s quest to find out how and why.

Three years later, Akers and Bronkie will release “Limetown’s” second season on Oct. 31; a prequel novel by Cote Smith will come out on Nov. 13, and a television adaption of the story starring Jessica Biel will start filming later this year for Facebook Watch.

“It was kind of insane to invest in a fictional podcast, which no one really even understood what that meant. You know, having to explain that to my parents was weird … and it’s funny … it’s not like they weren’t excited,” said Akers. “They just didn’t get it, and when I finally did it, they got it. My dad is like our biggest fan now because he gets it … he grew up listening to radio drama, so he understands it, and this is sort of the evolution of it, and he’s really into it.”

How ‘Limetown’ came to be

Audio storytelling appealed to Akers from a young age. He and his dad listened to audio dramas while he grew up in Athens. 

In 2004, he moved to attend film school at New York University and became friends with Bronkie. They graduated and got full-time jobs. Bronkie moved to San Francisco, and for five years the two kept trying to find a film project they could work on together.

Akers then got an idea in 2013. He regularly listened to podcasts while commuting for work and realized he and Bronkie could make one too.

Akers wrote the pilot in winter 2013. He and Bronkie brought in 30 actors to record it in May 2014 and took another eight months to edit it. They quit their jobs, formed a company together, Two Up Productions, and invested their money into “Limetown.”

When it was time to distribute the podcast’s pilot, Akers said he and Bronkie reached out to different companies but were mostly ignored. They decided to put it on iTunes themselves, and it paid off.

The podcast climbed the charts, and Akers and Bronkie had to write and produce the remaining episodes of “Limetown’s” first season in four months.

“It was overwhelming how much response we got, and again, it got us agents. It got us lawyers. It built our company. It got us a fanbase that we still rely on today. It was pretty crazy. We didn’t expect any of it,” said Akers.

Why feature a town in Tennessee?

The idea of a town’s people disappearing came first. Then, Akers had to decide where it would take place, and he didn’t immediately pick Tennessee.

Akers said he wanted the setting to have large limestone cave systems. He found one in South Dakota and first set the podcast there. Bronkie questioned Akers’ decision and pointed out that Tennessee had cave systems and was his home state.

Akers changed the setting to Tennessee and says now that “Limetown” reminds him of Oak Ridge.

“I wish that it had a cooler origin story, so I could say ‘Oh it’s inspired by Oak Ridge.’ And … maybe subliminally it was, but it wasn’t a conscious thing, and now it’s like ‘Oh yeah. It’s totally Oak Ridge.�� Like a weird government city that no one knew what was going on. That makes sense,” said Akers.

The logo for “Limetown,” a podcast created by East Tennessee native Zack Akers and Skip Bronkie. It’s getting a TV adaption with Jessica Biel next year. (Photo: Courtesy of Zack Akers)

From podcast to TV show

Having the podcast adapted for TV was one of the first things Akers and Skip wanted to do once the first season was released, according to Akers. It wasn’t an easy process. Akers and Bronkie spent two years writing and pitching the idea to different networks.

Jessica Biel  (Photo: Dan MacMedan, USA TODAY)

Last December, Facebook Watch, a new TV platform on Facebook, offered them a 10-episode series order.

Akers will serve as a writer and executive producer on the show. He is living in Vancouver until the TV show’s filming ends there in March 2019. It was recently announced that Biel would play the role of the protagonist: journalist Lia Haddock.

Akers said he never expected Biel to want to be a part of the project.

“But we have come to know her, and we’ve come to sort of understand her, and she loved the material like instantly, just like really she loves the podcast,” said Akers. “She loved the script, and she just immediately sort of invested in it. It was just one of those things where as soon as we talked to her it was just like invigorating. It sort of re-energized the whole process.”

‘Limetown’s’ second season

It’s been almost three years since the first season of “Limetown” came out. Akers said the delay was a result of working on the TV adaption and trying to figure out how to have the podcast and the show complement each other.

Akers said the second season will feature five full-length episodes and a few mini-episodes.

“It will pick up where the first season left off in a way that I think people are not going to expect, so that’s what I’ll say,” said Akers.

Read or Share this story: https://www.knoxnews.com/story/entertainment/2018/10/23/how-east-tennessee-natives-podcast-limetown-got-tv-series-jessica-biel/1681150002/

Source: https://www.knoxnews.com/story/entertainment/2018/10/23/how-east-tennessee-natives-podcast-limetown-got-tv-series-jessica-biel/1681150002/