Gregg Turkington and Tim Heidecker are set to perform a live On Cinema show at the Midland Theater in Kansas City on Nov. 12, bringing their long-running mock movie-review series to the stage as part of a tour that expands on their spring run. The Midland's event page advertises the night as featuring the duo's deadpan personas, including Heidecker's wellness guru Dr. Newman.
Ahead of the show, Turkington told The Pitch that the live performance folds in developments from On Cinema's current season and the spring leg of the tour. “A few plot points were resolved on the tour in the spring, and now we have to incorporate them into the show,” he said, adding that the on-stage movie reviews shift to reflect whatever is playing in theaters at the time.
Turkington went further, suggesting the Kansas City stop might not just reference the show's ongoing storylines but actually become part of them. “It could be fully canon,” he told the outlet. That blurring of live performance and scripted continuity has become a hallmark of the project, which Turkington described as mostly him and Heidecker with occasional smaller supporting parts.
Scripted Bits Meet Road-Tested Improv
Turkington described the live show's material as developing through a mix of improvisation and road-testing, with some portions scripted in advance. Heidecker offered a similar characterization to Pollstar, saying, “Some of it is written, but it's mostly improvised.” The November dates were billed as an expansion of the pair's spring 2026 run, according to Pollstar's reporting on the tour.
The Kansas City stop is one of several on a schedule that also includes Salt Lake City, Denver, Oklahoma City, Dallas, Houston, Austin and Tucson, per Consequence. That outlet described the format as a combination variety show and movie-review panel performed in the duo's established On Cinema personas. Consequence's tour listing specifically places the Midland Theater date on Nov. 12.
On Cinema itself began in 2011, according to The Pitch's interview with Turkington, and has since taken several forms. Pollstar traced its evolution from an audio-only podcast into a web video series in 2012 and then onto Warner/Discovery's Adult Swim in 2013. The A.V. Club notes the franchise has since spun off multiple side projects, including annual Oscars specials and a lengthy courtroom proceeding known as The Trial.
A Subscriber Model Built Around Avoiding Middlemen
Turkington told The Pitch that On Cinema is distributed through a subscriber-based network called HEI, a model he said lets revenue go directly toward production rather than passing through other companies. He framed it in blunt terms: “If someone sends us $7, they can see something on screen that their $7 went to 100%.” He also floated an alternative to blockbuster filmmaking, suggesting studios could fund 300 filmmakers with $1 million each instead of putting $300 million behind a single movie.
Pollstar reported that HEI Network launched in 2021 and had grown to more than 20,000 subscribers paying $6 a month or $50 a year. The A.V. Club notes that a typical episode reviews two to three new releases, the format's baseline even as the series has mutated into other shapes — including, per the outlet, a 17th season that swapped the movie-theater setting for Tim's character's basement bar in Lake Havasu.
Collecting Props, Posters and Vinyl Along the Way
Turkington told The Pitch he scours eBay for props and memorabilia as the show nears a season shoot, a habit tied to his taste for physical media and movie ephemera more broadly. He named West Side Story, Midnight Cowboy, Two-Lane Blacktop and The Night of the Hunter among his favorite films, and described buying an original Night of the Hunter poster listed on Craigslist in Los Angeles, signed by Robert Mitchum and Shelley Winters in green ballpoint pen.
He also talked up VHS and vinyl as formats worth preserving, telling The Pitch that VHS retains low-budget and horror titles unavailable on DVD, Blu-ray or streaming, and recalling a period when tapes sold for 25 cents each. He said vinyl's comeback makes sense to him because he considers it a superior format to what replaced it.
On the show's fictional side, Turkington pointed to a running bit called They Will Kill You, a segment of movie reviews that grew into a storyline about Tim misreading an email as a threat. The A.V. Club's rundown of the series' history also notes a five-hour livestreamed fictional murder trial that became one of the show's most elaborate spin-off events. Turkington described the franchise's fans as kind and engaged, participating in both its online episodes and its live shows.
The Midland's event listing notes that ticket resale through AXS Resale will not be available for the Nov. 12 show, and that the venue is cashless, accepting only debit or credit cards at its box office and bars.
