‘Alethea,’ Dystopian Sci-Fi Audio Drama Starring Beau Bridges & Helen Hunt, to Premiere 8/10 via Audible, Fresh Produce Media

Audible will premiere Alethea, a ten-part dystopian science fiction audio drama starring Beau Bridges, Helen Hunt, and Julia Rehwald (Netflix’s Fear Street), on August 10th. Mark Henry Phillips edited, scored, and - in his directorial debut - directed the series, the audio-first entertainment company Fresh Produce Media produced the series, and Katrina Day and Philomena Polefrone wrote the script.

Set 25 years into the future, Alethea’s central mystery takes place in a warped, hyper-capitalist world with echoes of our own. Instead of COVID, NYC’s been ravaged by a virus called Cato. And instead of a greed-fueled opioid epidemic, there's an epidemic of addiction to Gamma - the drug created to treat Cato. Wall Street doesn’t run Manhattan, but instead, Telos (the drug company behind Gamma) does - and it’s more powerful than any investment bank.

In this alternate universe, everything seems to be humming along until the protagonist, a young scientist working for Telos named Sam Bixler, stumbles upon information that sends her on a quest to find her missing parents and into the orbit of the Resistance - a loose-knit group of cells fighting to take down the company that employs her.

Alethea synopsis (Audible Original out August 10th)

Set in New York 2048, the story unfolds in a speculative near-future in which the world’s most powerful corporation Telos has turned all of Manhattan into a streamlined corporate campus. Sam Bixler (Julia Rehwald), a young scientist who works for Telos, stumbles upon information that sends her on a quest to find her missing parents and into the orbit of the Resistance - a loose-knit group of cells fighting to take down Telos.

Telos came to power two decades earlier after the outbreak of Cato – a deadly virus that ravaged the greater New York City area. Telos launched Project Alethea to develop a treatment that contained the virus and solidified Telos’ complete dominance of New York City and beyond. Project Alethea treated thousands of Cato patients, including Sam’s mother Joan (Helen Hunt), who died in an experimental trial when Sam was 16. When Sam finds evidence that Telos may have lied about her mother’s death and that Joan may actually still be alive, she returns to her Hudson Valley hometown to share the information with her estranged father, Clint (Beau Bridges). She finds that he’s gone missing too. In his place, Sam encounters the resistance movement – of which her father is an integral member – doing the dangerous work of uncovering the truth about Project Alethea.

Sam agrees to spy for the Resistance in exchange for information about her missing parents. But working with them means saying goodbye to her comfortable, happy life within the Telos System. And it might mean putting herself and the people she cares about in harm's way, too.

For more on Alethea, contact Mark Satlof (msatlof@shorefire.com) or Hannah Schwartz (hschwartz@shorefire.com) at Shore Fire Media.