EXCLUSIVE: AI firm Promise, whose backers include Peter Chernin and Google, is developing a psychological horror feature film based on the “dead internet theory.”

Dave Clark, a noted AI creator and filmmaker as well as Promise’s chief creative officer, is directing the project, which is titled Touch Grass. Backrooms executive producer Chris White and Bloody Disgusting founder Brad Miska are aboard as producers.

Backrooms has vividly illustrated the vast potential of mining grassroots genre material. The film, which has taken in $395 million at the global box office, has its origins as a property on 4chan and later blossomed on YouTube and TikTok before becoming the top-grossing title ever released by A24. Chernin became a producer of Backrooms after White helped bring the online videos made by visual effects artist Kane Parsons to wider attention. Atomic Monster also was a producer of Backrooms.

Touch Grass is not acquired IP. It is based on Clark’s original idea, which he brought to White and Miska. It explores the dead internet theory is a once-obscure belief that the internet is controlled by bots, AI content and fake personalities. The theory was developed several years ago but has gained legitimacy as AI has achieved greater scale and prominence in industry and society.

Per Promise’s logline, the film follows a young woman who designs AI personalities for a mysterious tech company . When she discovers a hidden world beneath the internet known as The Feed, she uncovers a terrifying secret: copies of people are being built from their deepest desires.

While Promise specializes in AI, it has also emphasized practical locations and virtual production in its work. Touch Grass will be produced via a hybrid production model that combines live-action actor performances, practical effects, traditional visual effects, and generative AI.

Miska will produce on behalf of Be Afraid Media, the horror media company behind Dread Central. He previously founded the influential genre brand Bloody Disgusting and co-developed the hit found-footage franchise V/H/S. Miska has helped bring more than 100 horror films to the screen, and the effectiveness of Bloody Disgusting’s imprimatur and community was driven home by the runaway success of the Terrifier franchise. Terrifier 3, released by Bloody Disgusting’s current parent company Cineverse, grossed $90 million worldwide in 2024, a huge multiple of its seven-figure production budget.

Clark is an award-winning filmmaker oversees the studio’s film and television slate alongside fellow Promise co-founders George Strompolos and Jamie Byrne. All three are executive producers of Touch Grass.

The film “taps into the fear that we can no longer trust what is real,” Clark said in a statement. “We leave behind digital versions of ourselves every day through our searches, conversations, and behavior online. This timely story asks what happens when those fragments become something far more powerful and dangerous.”

White said horror at its best “takes familiar ideas and pushes them just beyond the edge of plausibility. Touch Grass explores one of the defining technologies of our time through a story that’s both thought-provoking and deeply unsettling.”

Miska said, “Original horror thrives on fresh mythology and timely ideas. Touch Grass combines both, creating a psychological thriller that feels uniquely of this moment.”

EXCLUSIVE: Misfit janitors in a mysterious research facility are the subject of Doomsweepers, an animated comedy-horror series out of Australia.

Monkie Kid series director Sarah Harper has created the “horror-action-comedy” show with Sydney 2D animation studio Flying Bark onboard as producer. Also attached are Lightfold, Olan Rogers’ comics and animation studio aimed at creators. We can reveal today that L.A. publishing house Gungnir has also boarded the project.

A crowdfunder round held in collaboration with Lightfold has launched to raise further financing. A first-look trailer has dropped on YouTube to support the raise. You can see that above.

Last week, Flying Bark and Lightfold dropped a teaser for the project, but no key details were dropped at the time. We’ve now got word on the fun-looking antics it could provide.

Here’s the Doomsweepers synopsis: “Set in a mysterious research facility, Doomsweepers follows a team of misfit janitors who go from cleaning the staff room one day, to saving the world the next, and in doing so they unravel the facility’s best kept secret.”

Producers say the “candy-coloured art direction brings a unique, vibrant energy to the show that provides a visual point of difference from traditional dark, dystopian, apocalyptic content.”

Flying Bark is a 2D animation specialist based in Australia, with studio locations in Sydney, L.A. and Madrid. Recent productions include Netflix’s Stranger Things: Tales From ’85, Paramount’s Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender and original series Shaun Tan’s Tales from Outer Suburbia.

Lightfold, meanwhile, launched in 2023 to develop animated projects that have a direct connection to fans. Final Space creator Rogers and producer Forrester Kane created the biz, with the former’s crowdfunded animation pilot Godspeed its debut project. It launched on YouTube three years ago and has received more than 2.2 million views. 

Gungnir is known primarily as a counter-culture comics publisher, but has struck a series of deals to develop properties as TV shows and films, and vice-versa. In December 2025, it launched Gungnir Animation Studio to become “the Cartoon Network of the digital era.”

Harper – a writer, director and showrunner known for work on Lego’s Monkie Kid franchise and Nickelodeon’s Glitch Techs and Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – developed the “deeply personal project inspired by unsung heroes.”

She added: “The idea for Doomsweepers was born in 2019, when Australia was battling catastrophic bushfires, only to be hit by a global pandemic soon after. In those moments of uncertainty, I found myself drawn to the stories of everyday people who stepped up when it mattered most. 

“The Doomsweepers aren’t your typical heroes: they’re janitors in a tech facility, overlooked and underestimated. But when chaos erupts, they rise to the occasion, proving that courage can come from the most unexpected places.”

Here are a further selection of images.

It’s an epic story being told on an epic stage. The critics are having their say on George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones: The Mad King, the UK stage adaptation of the hit novels and series.

The sold-out show’s reviews embargo finally lifted after previews began a couple of weeks ago at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s home of Stratford Upon Avon. The ambitious production has drawn a number of strong notices. First look images courtesy of the RSC are below. This after multiple early shows were cancelled, much to fan ire.

Whatsonstage gave the star a glowing five-star review, calling it “a triumph; a soaring, surging spectacle and a latter-day history play, both serious and popular…It is a remarkable achievement, wonderfully directed by [Dominic] Cooke and superbly acted by every member of the 35-strong ensemble. The result is a brilliant exhibition of how theatre can create magic.”

The Guardian gave the show 4/5 stars, calling “an action-packed saga of dry ice and fire…this prequel to the TV series has one joust after another, spectacular stagecraft and plenty of modern resonance.”

Metro also gave the show 4/5 stars, writing: “As a stand-alone piece of theatre, The Mad King scrapes through. But as an extension of the Game of Thrones world, it scores well, shifting the narrative to the stage with suitably theatrical thrust.”

The Independent was also a fan, noting in its 4/5 star review, that the “stellar stage show has all the thrillingly staged battles, gory deaths and, yes, dragons that the most bloodthirsty fan could hope for… there’s also a surprising amount of heart – of the warm, still-beating kind – as it lingers on the faces of its fallen.”

The Daily Mail lauded the show but was one of many to acknowledge the challengingly long running time: “The first half of Cooke’s superbly staged, spectacular production has the feel of a dynamic Bayeux Tapestry: a stunning pageant of medieval stop-motion animation. But after the interval, the plot takes off. Sparks fly romantically and dramatically, which is just as well because, at three hours 45 minutes, it’s almost as long as Hamlet.”

The Telegraph had similar things to say in its largely positive review: “At almost four hours, it’s a long evening, sometimes too dense with detail, and it lacks the grit and gore (not to mention the nudity) of the TV series…Still, it capably serves newbies and devotees, and speaks in a timely fashion to our age of unruly leaders…It’s not up there, yet, with the Harry Potter or Stranger Things prequels but, on balance, the Game of Thrones franchise has yet another worthwhile and lucrative spin-off on its hands.”

The Times was one of the few dissenting voices, claiming that while the play “gives hardcore GoT fans a chance to go hunting for ‘Easter eggs’, it seldom comes close to matching the grim aura of the TV series…Duncan Macmillan’s script is sorely lacking in poetry. Events plod forward, one after the other, and although Michael Shaeffer is a thoroughly compelling presence as the cruel and chronically unstable monarch Aerys, other performances seem nuance-free. Too many lines are simply shouted. You expect better of the RSC.”

Game of Thrones creator Martin is said to have been heavily involved in the play, having a representative in rehearsals at all times, and he attended the opening night in Stratford on Saturday.

The Mad King is a stage prequel that, according to its official synopsis, is set in Harrenhal as a long winter begins to thaw. “At a lavish banquet on the eve of a jousting tournament,” the synopsis reads, “lovers meet and revelers speculate about who will contend. But in the shadows, amid growing unease at the bloodthirsty actions of the realm’s merciless Mad King, dissenters from his inner circle anxiously advance a treasonous plot. Far away, the drums of battle sound. Family bonds, ancient prophecies, and the sacred line of succession will be tested in a dangerous campaign for power. Who will survive? Who will rise?”

The play is inspired by the “Robert’s Rebellion” lore of Martin’s sprawling book series, in which the married Prince Rhaegar Targaryen, son of the Mad King Aerys, falls in love with, and runs off with, Lyanna Stark. This leads to a rebellion led by Robert Baratheon, who is engaged to Lyanna. Successfully deposing the Mad King, The Rebellion leads to the downfall of House Targaryen.