American Hostage is a scripted psychological thriller podcast directed by Shawn Christensen and starring Jon Hamm, Joseph Perrino, Carla Gugino, and Dylan Baker. [1] [2] It was produced by Criminal Content and released on February 22, 2022, by Amazon Music and Wondery. [3] On March 8, 2022, it debuted at #7 on Apple Podcasts United States. [4] [5]
It is a dramatization of the true incident of Tony Kiritsis, who took his mortgage broker hostage in 1977. [6] The crisis took place over three days. [7]
On November 15, 2023, it was announced that American Hostage would be adapted into a television anthology series, with Shawn Ryan as the showrunner and Hamm reprising his role as Fred Heckman. [8]
Carla Gugino is an American actress. After early roles in the films Troop Beverly Hills (1989), This Boy's Life (1993), Son in Law (1993), and Snake Eyes (1998), Gugino received wider recognition for her starring roles in the Spy Kids trilogy (2001–2003), Sin City (2005), Night at the Museum (2006), American Gangster (2007), Righteous Kill (2008), Race to Witch Mountain (2009), Sally Jupiter in Watchmen (2009), Sucker Punch (2011), Mr. Popper's Penguins (2011), San Andreas (2015), Gerald's Game (2017), and Gunpowder Milkshake (2021).
Anthony "Tony" George Kiritsis was an American kidnapper.
Jonathan Daniel Hamm is an American actor best known for his role as Don Draper in the period drama series Mad Men (2007–2015), for which he won numerous accolades, including a Primetime Emmy Award and two Golden Globe Awards.
Joseph Perrino is an American actor. He is best known for his role in the drama film Sleepers in 1996.
Rya Kihlstedt is an American actress. She starred in the 1997 comedy film Home Alone 3 as Alice Ribbons. Kihlstedt would go on to appear in the films Deep Impact (1998), Women in Trouble (2009) and The Atticus Institute (2015). On television, she had a recurring roles as Dr. Michelle Ross in the Showtime crime drama Dexter and as Marilyn Rhodes in the ABC musical drama Nashville. In 2015, Kihlstedt starred in the NBC miniseries Heroes Reborn.
Andrew Klavan is an American novelist and conservative political commentator. He has also worked in film and as an essayist and video satirist. He is also known for being a political commentator and hosts The Andrew Klavan Show podcast on the conservative site The Daily Wire.
Sebastián Gutiérrez is a Venezuelan film director, screenwriter and film producer. He wrote the screenplays to the films Gothika, Snakes on a Plane, The Eye and The Big Bounce, and wrote and directed two independent ensemble comedies, Women in Trouble and Elektra Luxx.
Quinn Edmond Julian Lord is a Canadian actor. Beginning his professional acting career at age five, Lord played Sam in the 2007 feature film Trick 'r Treat and was nominated for the Young Artist Award as Best Leading Young Actor in a Feature Film for his role as Thomas Whitman in the 2012 feature film Imaginaerum. He had a recurring role in Amazon's TV series The Man in the High Castle.
Universal Content Productions LLC (UCP) is an American television production company operating within the Universal Studio Group division of NBCUniversal, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Comcast.
Karl Gajdusek is an American screenwriter, producer, and playwright. He was the showrunner for the first season of the Netflix series Stranger Things and the co-creator of the TV series Last Resort with Shawn Ryan. They were both also executive producers for the series. Gajdusek also wrote for the series Dead Like Me and wrote the film Trespass (2011). He co-wrote the screenplay for the 2013 Tom Cruise movie, Oblivion, and The November Man, which was released in 2014.
Shawn Christensen is an American musician, filmmaker, podcaster and artist. He is a graduate of Pratt Institute, where he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in illustration and graphic design. Christensen was the frontman of the indie rock band Stellastarr. In 2013, he won the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film for his short film Curfew.
Cynthia Erivo is an English actress and singer. She gained recognition for starring in the Broadway revival of The Color Purple from 2015 to 2017, for which she won the 2016 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical and the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album. Erivo ventured into films in 2018, playing roles in the heist film Widows and the thriller Bad Times at the El Royale. For her portrayal of American abolitionist Harriet Tubman in the biopic Harriet (2019), Erivo received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress; she also wrote and performed the song "Stand Up" on its soundtrack, which garnered her a nomination in the Best Original Song category.
Anonymous Content (AC) is an independent global entertainment company founded in 1999 by CEO Steve Golin, Dave Morrison and Gore Verbinski. It is based in Los Angeles with offices in Culver City, New York City and London.
Taylor John Smith is an American actor. He is known for his role as John Keene in the series Sharp Objects. Notable films in which he has appeared are Wolves (2016), You Get Me (2017), Hunter Killer (2018), The Outpost (2020), Shadow in the Cloud (2020), and Where the Crawdads Sing (2022).
Kate Gordon Siegelbaum, known professionally as Kate Siegel, is an American actress and screenwriter. Dubbed a scream queen for her extensive work in the horror genre, Siegel is known for her collaborations with her husband, Mike Flanagan. She has starred in the films Oculus (2013), Hush (2016) which she also co-wrote, Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016), and Gerald's Game (2017), as well as the television series The Haunting of Hill House (2018), The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020), Midnight Mass (2021), and The Fall of the House of Usher (2023).
My Favorite Murder is a weekly true crime comedy podcast hosted by American comedians Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. The first episode was released in January 2016. The podcast debuted at #25 on the iTunes podcast charts and peaked at #3 on April 27, 2018. Weekly episodes regularly land within the iTunes' Top 10 Comedy Podcast chart. As of 2020, the podcast gets 35 million downloads per month.
Jett is an American action crime drama television series created by Sebastian Gutierrez. It stars Carla Gugino and premiered on June 14, 2019, on Cinemax. The drama ended with only 1 season and 9 episodes.
Colton Ryan is an American actor and singer. He is known for his performance as Conrad "Coco" Roy in the Hulu miniseries The Girl from Plainville (2022), for which he garnered critical acclaim, and for playing Connor Murphy, a role which he understudied in the Broadway musical Dear Evan Hansen and reprised in the 2021 film adaptation. He is also known for playing the main role of Samuel on the Apple TV+ series Little Voice and originating the roles of Gene Laine in Girl from the North Country and Jim Doyle in New York, New York, the latter of which earned him a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Leading Actor in a Musical.
Jon Hamm is an American actor known for his performances in film and television.