Scene Stealers: Stories from a TV Festival
Presented by the Atomic Café Podcast

🎧 Recorded live at the Monte Carlo TV Festival 2025

Welcome back to Scene Stealers, the Atomic Cafe Podcast mini-series where we go behind the velvet rope of television’s most cinematic minds. This episode, we sit down with David W. Zucker – longtime executive producer, chief creative officer at Scott Free Productions, and unofficial godfather of prestige genre television (no offense, Ridley).

We talk creatures (yes, plural) in FX’s Alien: Earth, philosophical futures in Blade Runner 2099, and why Zucker still can’t sleep after watching Alien.

💬 Topics include:

• Why Alien: Earth is more than just a xenomorph rehash – and how Noah Hawley is boldly going where even Ridley hesitated
• What went wrong (and right) behind the scenes of Blade Runner 2099
• Zucker’s early days as a screenwriter and how a job he did not look for turned into a 24-year creative partnership
• A hopeful, cautious look at the future of TV in a post-streamer consolidation world
• Why David's kids are obsessed with Prison Break
• The one book he’s dying to adapt: Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom

🛸 Yes, it’s sci-fi. But it's also a mirror to our transhumanist, late-capitalist now.
 🎭 Yes, it’s horror. But David can’t even watch all of it. His kids can, though.
 📉 And yes, TV is in chaos. But maybe that’s exactly what creativity needs.

Scene Stealers Episode #2 | Atomic Cafe Podcast spin-off
Guest: David W. Zucker
Hosted and produced by: Holger Potye
Location: recorded at the Monte Carlo TV Festival (2025)

BONUS Episode Scene Stealers Logo: Created with | by ChatGPT

MUSIC: „Guitar Songs“ provided by mobygratis

This is a "This Fox means Business Production“
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Hosted by Babs Kaudelka, Holger Potye & Michi Reichelt
Producer: Holger Potye / Showrunner: Momo
Photo: by Julia Rotter
Logo: by Favoritbüro
Exec Producer: Julia Rotter
Social Media Rep: Babs Kaudelka
Invisible Producer: Tim
Additional Sound Effects by FreeSoundsxx|Freesound_community from Pixabay

Der Atomic Cafe Jingle ist eine gekürzte Version des Wahlkampfspots „Daisy“ aus dem Wahlkampf zwischen Lyndon B. Johnson vs. Barry Goldwater aus dem Jahr 1964. Copyright: Library of Congress