Eric Heisserer joins the Capes and Tights Podcast for Episode 245 on October 1, 2025. To prepare for the conversation, we have compiled 10 movies, shows, and comics by Heisserer you should watch or read.
Heisserer is the Academy Award-nominated screenwriter of Arrival (2016), as well as Bird Box (2018), A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010), The Thing (2011), Final Destination 5 (2011), Bloodshot (2020), and more. He is also the creator of the television series Shadow and Bone. As for the print medium, Heisserer is credited with writing comic books such as Shaper (Dark Horse), Lone Wolf 2100 (Dark Horse), Zombie Tales (BOOM! Studios), Secret Weapons (Valiant), and more! His debut novel, Simultaneous, hits bookstores everywhere on October 28, 2025 from Flatiron Books.
Arrival
Screenwriter: Eric Heisserer
Linguistics professor Louise Banks leads an elite team of investigators when gigantic spaceships touch down in 12 locations around the world. As nations teeter on the verge of global war, Banks and her crew must race against time to find a way to communicate with the extraterrestrial visitors. Hoping to unravel the mystery, she takes a chance that could threaten her life and quite possibly all of mankind.
Final Destination 5
Screenwriter: Eric Heisserer
During a bus ride with his colleagues to a corporate retreat, Sam experiences a horrifying vision: the suspension bridge that they — and many others — are crossing starts to crumble around them. When his vision ends and, almost immediately, starts to come true, Sam takes quick action that saves a number of people, including his girlfriend, Molly, and his best friend, Peter. However, the survivors soon find that Death will not be denied.
Secret Weapons (Valiant)
The government has dispatched Amanda McKee – the technopath codenamed Livewire – to investigate the ruins of a secret facility formerly run by Toyo Harada, the most powerful telepath on Earth and her former mentor. In his quest for world betterment at any cost, Harada sought out and activated many potential psiots like himself.
Those who survived, but whose powers he deemed to have no value to his cause, were hidden away at this installation. But Livewire, having studied Harada’s greatest strengths and learned his deepest weaknesses, senses opportunity where he once saw failure. A young girl who can talk to birds… A boy who can make inanimate objects gently glow… To others, these are expensive disappointments. But, to Livewire, they are secret weapons…in need of a leader. Now, as a mechanized killer called Rex-O seeks to draw them out, Livewire and her new team of cadets will be forced to put their powers into action…in ways they never could have imagined…
The Thing (2011)
Screenwriter: Eric Heisserer
After Norwegian researchers discover an alien ship buried in the ice, paleontologist Kate Lloyd joins the team at the isolated Arctic outpost to investigate. She finds an organism that appears to have perished in the crash eons ago but, in fact, is about to awake. Freed from its icy prison, the insidious life-form goes on the attack. Paranoia spreads like wildfire among the crew as they fight to survive against a creature that assumes the shapes of its victims.
Bird Box
Screenwriter: Eric Heisserer
When a mysterious force decimates the population, only one thing is certain — if you see it, you die. The survivors must now avoid coming face to face with an entity that takes the form of their worst fears. Searching for hope and a new beginning, a woman and her children embark on a dangerous journey through the woods and down a river to find the one place that may offer sanctuary. To make it, they’ll have to cover their eyes from the evil that chases them — and complete the trip blindfolded.
Shaper (Dark Horse)
A galactic empire hunts a race of shape shifters that it believes will overthrow its rule. When an orphaned teenager discovers that he is one of the hunted-a Shaper-he must use his newfound abilities to save his people and fulfill the empire’s prophecy of its own downfall.
Lights Out
Screenwriter: Eric Heisserer
When Rebecca left home, she thought that her childhood fears were behind her. As a young girl growing up, she was never really sure of what was real when the lights went out at night. Now, her little brother Martin is experiencing the same unexplained and terrifying events that jeopardized her safety and sanity. Holding a mysterious attachment to their mother, a supernatural entity has returned with a vengeance to torment the entire family.
A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
Screenwriter: Eric Heisserer
Teenagers Nancy, Quentin, Kris, Jesse and Dean are all neighborhood friends who begin having the same dream of a horribly disfigured man who wears a tattered sweater and a glove made of knives. The man, Freddy Krueger, terrorizes them in their dreams, and the only escape is to wake up. But when one of their number dies violently, the friends realize that what happens in the dream world is real, and the only way to stay alive is to stay awake.
Lone Wolf 2100 (Dark Horse)
AD 2100: The world has been devastated by a manmade plague. Young Daisy Ogami is infected but unaffected. In her blood can be found a cure that will save humanity, but the remaining world powers are less concerned with preserving humanity and more with being the first nation to return to power.
Unfortunately for them, Daisy has a protector: a loyal android named Itto. Together, they set out across the Plague Lands looking for a way to save the world!
Bloodshot
Screenwriter: Eric Heisserer
Recently killed in action, soldier Ray Garrison gets a new lease on life when the RST Corp. brings him back from the dead. With an army of nanotechnology in his veins, he’s an unstoppable force — stronger than ever with the power to heal instantly. But when the company decides to manipulate his mind and memories, Garrison must embark on a desperate mission to find out what’s real and what’s not.
Simultaneous (Flatiron Books)
Federal agent Grant Lukather works for an unknown department of Homeland Security called Predictive Analytics. They look for patterns in tips and chatter to prevent a terrorist event before it happens. One of these calls, about a possible explosion in New Mexico, leads Grant to a case with unimaginable consequences.
He meets Sarah Newcomb, a therapist who uses past-life hypnosis in her treatment but has recently stumbled upon a phenomenon that seems to defy logic. Grant follows this thread to another crime: a copycat killer case in Colorado. With the help of one of Sarah’s patients, they embark upon an investigation that spans multiple states, timelines, and consciousnesses. With limited time and only a tenuous grasp of how this phenomenon works, the unlikely trio are in a race for their lives—past, present, and future.
Simultaneous is a thrilling, fast-paced speculative crime fiction packed with twists, a truly unique premise, and just the right touch of humor. Eric Heisserer‘s debut novel is bold, mind-bending, and most of all a must-read for fans of the genre. Given how much I have loved his work on screen over the years, it’s no surprise this book hit the mark for me. – CLICK HERE to read our entire review
