Joe Bob Briggs has spent more than four decades telling us what he thinks about movies, and now he’s giving fans a chance to hear him read his own words. The legendary drive-in movie critic is narrating an audiobook edition of Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-In, based on the updated and expanded Dark Horse Books edition.
The audiobook is scheduled to be released digitally on December 15, 2026, with pre-orders now available through Joe Bob Briggs’ official website. The DRM-free audiobook will run for more than 14 hours and will feature Joe Bob reading his original drive-in columns, movie reviews, fan letters, and replies.
Joe Bob had this to say about having to read all of this stuff out loud.
“People have been asking me to read my own book for decades, mainly because many of them can’t read. Now you can hear every high-body-count review, every drive-in total, and every crazy fan letter exactly the way it was meant to be experienced. … Stuff you wrote 40 years ago can be DANGED EMBARRASSING when you have to say it out loud. I resisted the urge to edit my youthful silliness, though, so this is crude OG Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-in.”
Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-In Audiobook Release Date and Price
The Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-In audiobook is scheduled for digital release on December 15, 2026. Pre-orders are currently available exclusively through Joe Bob Briggs’ official website. The pre-order price is $25.99. The audiobook is DRM-free, meaning buyers will be able to keep it and play it in the audiobook app or player of their choice.
The audiobook is based on the updated and expanded edition of Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-In that Dark Horse Books recently released. That edition brought Joe Bob’s original writing back into print while adding material that hadn’t been available for more than 40 years.
What Is Included in Joe Bob Briggs’ Audiobook?
The audiobook contains the complete, unabridged version of the expanded edition. That means listeners will get Joe Bob’s original columns for the Dallas Times-Herald, his reviews of classic and obscure genre movies, fan letters, and his famously unfiltered replies.
The book collects the writing that helped establish Joe Bob as one of the most distinctive voices in movie criticism, so it’s only fitting that Joe Bob narrate the audiobook himself. His television career has always been built around the idea that the way he talks about movies is as entertaining as the movies themselves. Now you can take the drive-in with you.
Joe Bob Briggs’ Last Drive-In Era Is Coming to an End
The audiobook announcement arrives at an interesting moment in Joe Bob Briggs’ career. Earlier this year, Shudder announced that The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs would be coming to an end as a regular series. However, the streamer commissioned additional specials that will continue airing through the end of 2026.
The next one is Joe Bob’s Halloween House Party, which will reunite Joe Bob and Darcy the Mail Girl for a seasonal double feature. The special airs live on Shudder on October 23 at 9 p.m. ET and will be available on demand beginning October 25.
And while the regular series is ending, Joe Bob certainly isn’t disappearing.
Joe Bob Briggs Is Bringing MonsterVision to Comics
Joe Bob and Darcy are also heading into a new medium with MonsterVision Featuring Joe Bob Briggs and Darcy, a new comic book series from Dynamite Entertainment. The first issue is scheduled to hit comic shops on December 23, 2026.
Written by David Avallone and drawn by Edu Menna, the series finds Joe Bob and Darcy hunting monsters together in a “deep-fried adventure” designed to capture the horror, humor, and larger-than-life personality of Joe Bob’s movie-hosting career.
For longtime fans, that title should immediately bring back memories of Joe Bob’s years hosting TNT’s MonsterVision from 1996 to 2000.
Joe Bob Briggs Is Planning a New TV Series for 2027
And then there’s the biggest question: what’s next on television? Joe Bob has already been talking about a new show for 2027.
With The Last Drive-In winding down, he has said that his next series will focus on forgotten films, rather than the beloved horror classics that have become staples of the genre-hosting format. He described the “sweet spot” for forgotten cult movies as 1969 to 1977, pointing toward films that have been overlooked, neglected, rediscovered, or simply haven’t been beaten to death by decades of discussion.
The concept has already been tested through Joe Bob’s live Satan’s Workshop events, where he screened underseen movies and gauged the audience’s reactions as potential material for the new show.
There is no announced network or streaming home for the new series yet, but Joe Bob has made it clear that he’s not finished hosting movies.
Joe Bob Briggs Has Been Keeping the Drive-In Alive for Decades
Joe Bob Briggs made his name as a drive-in movie critic in the early 1980s before becoming the host of Joe Bob’s Drive-in Theater on The Movie Channel, which ran from 1986 to 1996. He then took over MonsterVision on TNT, hosting that series from 1996 to 2000.
After an eighteen-year stretch away from television, Joe Bob returned in 2018 with The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs on Shudder. The series began with a 13-film marathon that became such a massive event that it crashed Shudder’s servers. That marathon convinced Shudder to turn The Last Drive-In into an ongoing series, and Joe Bob and Darcy went on to introduce audiences to hundreds of horror and exploitation movies.
Even though that particular chapter is ending, Joe Bob’s schedule remains full. There’s the December 15 audiobook, the December 23 MonsterVision comic, the October 23 Halloween House Party, and a new television series planned for 2027. There will also be a Christmas special on Shudder along the way.
Not bad for a drive-in movie critic who has been doing this for more than 40 years.
And now, for the first time, we can hear Joe Bob read his own book. The Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-In audiobook is available to pre-order now for $25.99, with digital delivery scheduled for December 15, 2026. Will you be picking it up? Let us know in the comments below.
The post Joe Bob Briggs’ Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-In audiobook arrives in December appeared first on JoBlo.
No comments:
Post a Comment