Impact Winter
“They came after the impact and the firestorms. When the sun went dark. Like they’d been there all along. Just waiting.”
From executive producers of The Walking Dead and Travis Beacham, the writer of Pacific Rim, comes a heart-stopping Audible Original featuring a brilliant British cast. It’s the near future and seven years since a comet hit the earth and blotted out the sun. The world is a dark, frozen landscape. And then, beastly creatures emerge and take over. Can they really be vampires?
In the British countryside, a band of survivors forms a resistance in the fallout shelter of a medieval castle. Darcy is a battle-tested vampire hunter who is at the front line leading the charge to save humanity. Meanwhile, her younger sister Hope wants life to return normal so she can go above ground and know what it’s like to live again. And she just might be willing to risk it all.
A story of apocalypse, horror, and adventure, Impact Winter is a wholly original new saga created just for Audible with immersive 3D audio that dares you to pop in your earbuds and listen in the dark. Venture into an eternally sunless world of swords and crossbows; primal hunters and shape-shifters; leaders and lovers. Hear how a brave few fight to survive the impact winter.
Starring Liam Cunningham as Jepson Belgrave, Holliday Grainger as Darcy, Esme Creed-Miles as Hope, David Gyasi as Rook, Bella Ramsey as Whisper and Indira Varma as Kallistrata, Himesh Patel as Felix.
Written, directed and executive produced by Travis Beacham. Also Executive Produced by Robert Kirkman, David Alpert, Rick Jacobs, Bryan Furst, Sean Furst and Alexandra August of Skybound Entertainment, Bard Dorros and Zack Hayden of Anonymous Content and Cliff Roberts. Executive producer for Audible was Matt Patterson.
Associate Producer: Wes Mazda
Please note: This content is for mature audiences only. It contains adult language and themes. Discretion is advised.
Our Editor's Take
There's no shortage of vampire novels, comic books, films, and TV shows. As a narrative podcast, though, Impact Winter has an edge. The apocalyptic near-future thriller uses spatial audio technology, delivering the effect of 3D surround sound. That means listeners hear everything coming at them, from all different angles. They hear every slash of the sword and every scratch of a long, sharp, twisted claw.
So horror fans will want to use their headphones for this one. Because all one can do when one doesn't have a visual to fall back on is to use their imagination. And that can take the listener on an even more terrifying journey than if they could see what was happening.
But Impact Winter isn't only a gore fest. There's romance. There's an endearing coming-of-age story involving two sisters, the protagonists. The eldest, Darcy, is a natural vampire hunter and the primary hero of the story. Her younger sister, Hope, grew up underground. She's only known life beneath the old castle that's sheltered her and other survivors. She longs to see the world outside, and that creates problems.
Impact Winter features a stellar cast of British actors. It's led by Holliday Grainger (The Borgias, Great Expectations) as Darcy Dunraven. Esmé Creed-Miles (the Amazon Video series Hanna) is Hope Dunraven. Himesh Patel (Yesterday, Tenet, Don't Look Up) plays their friend Felix Molloy. David Gyasi (Cloud Atlas, Interstellar) plays Rook. And Game of Thrones's Liam Cunningham plays Jepson Belgrave. Belgrave is head of security for the castle, and serves as the Dunravenses' adoptive father as well.
Writer and director Travis Beachum wrote the blockbuster sci-fi film Pacific Rim. He also created the acclaimed television series Carnival Row. But Impact Winter presented a new and exciting challenge. Could Beachum hold his audience's attention with only audio? One only needs to listen to the eerie first scene in Episode 1 to realize the answer is a resounding yes.
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