New York (AFP)

The genre was minor two years ago, but with the explosion of podcasts, the audio fiction is accelerating, under the eye of Hollywood, which sees a breeding ground for new films or series.

They are still a handful, lost between talk shows, judicial podcasts, scientific or historical, but they multiply. "Blackout", "Passenger List", "Carrier", and soon "Motherhacker" or "Frontier Tween", the number and quality keep rising.

"That's something we were hoping for, and now it's taking," says Rob Herting, who founded production company QCode just over a year ago and already has several successful podcasts , especially "Blackout", where a giant blackout will undermine the foundations of the company.

Sign of the new interest for this format, leading actors such as Rami Malek ("Blackout"), recent Oscar for Best Actor, now lend their voices to these series of audio fiction.

"When I started," two years ago, "nobody was thinking about fiction," says Mimi O'Donnell, head of gender at Gimlet, a production company bought by Spotify in February.

But recently, she says she has seen an influx of writers, including "creators who have never done anything in audio but are known in film, television or theater."

At QCode, many authors also come from this milieu, even if the link is not obvious. "This is clearly a new way of thinking and an exciting challenge for them," says Rob Herting.

So far entrenched in the real world, the podcast universe is only beginning to realize the potential of audio fiction.

"Audio fiction can shape this fantastic link with the listener," says Marc Sollinger, co-creator of the "Archive 81" podcast. "By depriving him of images, he lets him create mentally and imagine the characters, sets, monsters, situations."

"And all he will create will be much better and incomparably more interesting than a $ 20 million film," he continues.

For Rob Herting, "people are turning to audio because they can not look at a screen anymore."

Ironically, it is the saturation of images that contributes to the renewal of a genre that the emergence of television has more or less eradicated.

During the 1930s and 1940s, radio was the medium of reference and audio fiction a major genre.

On October 30, 1938, Orson Welles involuntarily sowed panic among thousands of Americans, who believed in a Martian invasion by hearing passages from the book "The War of the Worlds".

- From sound to image -

In a landscape of fully structured podcasts, where audio platforms are seeking premium content to attract listeners and even paying subscribers, the fictional podcast is emerging as a product of appeal.

In addition to attracting authors and actors, he is interested in more and more Hollywood, eager for material.

"Homecoming," Gimlet's podcast adapted by Amazon, starring Julia Roberts in the lead role, has left a lasting impression.

In mid-October, Facebook Watch, the video platform of the social network, will launch "Limetown", a television version of a podcast released in 2015.

"We build these stories with the hope that they can become a series," says Rob Herting, a former agent in Hollywood. "It's something we integrate into the business model of a project."

"There is no way to create audio thinking it could be a movie," says Mimi O'Donnell, "because it's completely different. (...) We do not choose something in the hope of what could happen next. "

"What I really like in the fictional podcast are the stories that exploit the medium's sound potential," says Marc Sollinger, "which do not sound like a TV script without the images."

For Rob Herting, the next step for audio fiction will be the hit. "I do not think fiction still has hers, but it's happening."

Because the podcast in English has the opportunity to become a worldwide success without the limitations of rights and territoriality that often punctuate television.

Spotify and Gimlet are also thinking of "stories that can reach a global audience," says Mimi O'Donnell, "beyond the United States or New York."

© 2019 AFP