Not Just Andy Weir Karaoke’: How Exoplanet Combines a Space Disaster With Time Travel in a Massive New Audio Thriller Starring

Exoplanet, an audio sci-fi thriller starring Anthony Mackie, Ariana DeBose and John Leguizamo, arrives on Audible Nov. 5, IGN has revealed the Audible Original’s cover art ahead of its release.

The story follows a team of astronauts whose ship “is torn apart by a quantum anomaly,” leaving each surviving crew member crash-landed in a different era on the same deadly exoplanet — hunted, alone and running out of time. Chief Engineer Jeff Shaw (Anthony Mackie), aided by his virtual assistant (Ray Porter), must battle an unforgiving present to get home to his daughter. First Officer Becca Bang (Ariana DeBose) fights to survive a hostile alien past, while Science Officer Logan Bowers (John Leguizamo) wakes in a machine-ruled future that shouldn’t exist.

The project comes from writer Andy Weir and producer Percy, who described the audio drama as something distinct from his usual work. “Nobody wants to read Andy Weir karaoke,” Percy said. “I like to Trojan horse different genres together. So this is an Andy Weir space disaster that has the Trojan horse of time travel inside of it. That allowed me to honor Andy Weir’s legacy because what I was thinking when I wrote this was like, ‘If I were Andy Weir, what is a crazy-ass sci-fi story I could tell?'”

Percy said collaborating with Weir and the team at Audible pushed his normal storytelling process into something new. He also pointed to Exoplanet’s cast as contributing more than just their voices.

“I refer to writing novels as an almost monastic experience,” Percy said. “And when you are working with actors, you have to understand that you’re building together. So the script is a baseline, but when John Leguizamo comes in and starts reading and interpreting the text, you come to think about it flexibly and realize that through conversation with him over Zoom and through improvisation that you can make the storytelling even more powerful.”

Weir said he shares a similar collaborative process with actors, pointing to his experience on this year’s film adaptation of Project Hail Mary.

“Well,” Weir said. “I like to jokingly say that Ryan Gosling considered the script to be sort of a suggestion.”

Weir described his role on Exoplanet as going far beyond simply approving concepts he liked, comparing it to his work on Project Hail Mary.

“For Project Hail Mary, I was a full-on producer, making decisions, giving notes on the script,” Weir said. “I was there for the whole shoot. I was giving feedback on a take, asking the directors, ‘Hey, can you change this and that?’ And obviously, nobody had to do what I said, but people listened. So my experience on Exoplanet was very much the same as Project Hail Mary.”

“These stories are curated by me,” Weir said. “If I like the idea, then I workshop it with [Audible and the writers]. I’m not just a passive observer. There’s a lot of back and forth.” He added that Exoplanet is the first of multiple originals he’ll be producing for Audible.

Percy said listeners should expect “three-dimensionality” to the production, including sound moving from one side of the room to another.

“When you listen, there’s a three-dimensionality to it,” Percy said. “You can hear something moving from one side of the room to another. Wear good headphones.”