movies
Promise AI Developing Horror Feature ‘Touch Grass’ With ‘Backrooms’ EP Chris White Producing
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.”
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movies
Anne Hathaway on Her Busy Year of Movies, Adaptation of ‘Yesteryear’
It’s eight months into 2026 and Anne Hathaway is about to release her fourth movie of the year.
The star is on quite a run, with her latest film The End of Oak Street joining her recent releases The Odyssey, Devil Wears Prada 2 and Mother Mary; and she’s not even done, with an adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s Verity coming in October.
“When I got my schedule for this year from all the wonderful film studios that I’ve worked with, I saw it and I kind of thought I was being punked,” Hathaway admitted to The Hollywood Reporter at The End of Oak Street premiere on Sunday. “But then they showed me that no, no, no, all these [release] dates were going to hold and I just said as long as audiences don’t get sick of my face — which I wouldn’t blame them, I would not blame them if they did— let’s go.”
She continued of her busy and wide-ranging slate, “I think it’s fun. Obviously I love making movies, take a look, but I also love that audiences want to go see original things and this movie is really original. It’s David Robert Mitchell in the director’s chair, directing a script that he wrote, and I’ve never seen anything like this so I was just really happy to be a part of it.”
The End of Oak Street sees Hathaway starring alongside Ewan McGregor, Maisy Stella and Christian Convery as a family trying to survive when their neighborhood mysteriously uproots and they find themselves surrounded by dinosaurs.
And it’s not the only sci-fi on the actress’ plate, as Hathaway is set to write and produce a big-screen adaptation of Caro Claire Burke’s smash novel Yesteryear. The book is one of the biggest of 2026, having spent 17 weeks on the New York Times Best Sellers list, and follows a tradwife influencer who finds herself transported back to the 19th century.
Speaking for the first time about the project on the carpet, Hathaway noted, “That’s been a really fun discovery because I read a draft two years ago and I knew the intense feeling that I had for it, so it’s been really fun watching people discover it. I have friends writing me, they’re like ‘What, how?’”
She continued, “One of my friends wrote me and said ‘I can’t remember the last time that I immediately re-read a book.’ People are just loving it and I couldn’t be happier for Caro, what a triumph for her. And now we just have to do the movie justice.”
In the meantime, The End of Oak Street hits theaters on Friday.
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movies
Tedde More Dead: Teacher In ‘A Christmas Story’ Who Had Dozens Of Credits Was 79
Tedde Moore, who played Ralphie’s teacher Miss Shields in the holiday classic A Christmas Story as part of a long screen and stage career, has died. She was 79.
Her family wrote on social media that she died August 5 in Huntsville, Ontario, but did not reveal a cause of death.
“On Wednesday August 5th under sunny skies overlooking Fairy Lake, Tedde passed away surrounded by family physically and spiritually in her beloved Huntsville Muskoka,” the statement read. Her bravery in this choice was almost overwhelming, beyond beautiful and also difficult. Forever the teacher, she had a quote for every occasion and a special way of touching the lives and hearts of everyone she met. Her magic and love will be remembered by all she took under her generous and welcoming wings.
Born Dorothea Mavor Moore on April 11, 1947, in Toronto, she was part of a showbiz family that included her actor father Mavor Moore and grandmother Dora Mavor Moore, a pioneer in Canadian theater. She graduated with honors from London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1967 and soon was starring in a Canadian stage production of the Bard’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream opposite Christopher Walken.
Moore then began acting in TV and films before being landing her most famous role. She played the strict but patient grade-school teacher of Peter Billingsley’s Ralphie in Bob Clark’s classic A Christmas Story, which has become among the most popular holiday films of the past half-century. The pic was inducted into the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry in 2012.
In one of the film’s signature scenes, Ralphie and Schwartz (R.D. Robb) get their friend Flick (Scott Schwartz) to put his tongue on a frozen flagpole — in response to a “triple dog dare” — leading to a medical emergency that requires the Fire Department to free the kid. When Moore’s Miss Shields grills the class as to who was responsible, she delivers the memorable lines: “Those who did it know their blame, and I’m sure that the guilt you feel is far worse than any punishment you might receive. Now, don’t you feel terrible? Don’t you feel remorse for what you have done?”
She would reprise the Miss Shields role for the 1994 sequel My Summer Story — the only actor to appear as the same character in both movies. She also appeared documentaries about A Christmas Story over the years.
Moore continued to act in films and TV into the late 2010s, guesting on such series as Friday the 13th: The Series T&T, Odyssey 5 and RoboCop: PORime Directives, along with appearing in a number of TV movies and miniseries including 2011’s The Kennedys. She also voiced the aunt of the title character in the Rolie Polie Olie series and one movie.
She also worked as an acting teacher during her career.
Moore was married to Canadian director Donald Shebib from 1976 until his death in 2023. They had two children, Suzanna and Noah Shebib, a child actor-turned-music producer who has worked extensive with Drake throughout the wildly popular Canadian rapper’s long career. Moore also had a daughter from an earlier relationship and raised a foster daughter.
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movies
Netflix Wraps Upfront, Doubling Ad Commitments; Women’s World Cup Inventory Nearly Sold Out
Netflix said Monday it has closed its upfront sales process, hitting its target of nearly doubling its ad commitments.
In reporting quarterly earnings last month, Netflix execs reaffirmed their expectation that ad revenue will hit $3 billion in 2026, twice the 2025 level. The streaming giant is in the fourth year of its exploration of ads, an initiative that reversed more than a decade of resistance to the idea. It now annually presents its wares in an upfront presentation to advertisers in New York, alongside other pitches from YouTube, Amazon, Disney and other big media sellers.
“This upfront proved that advertisers are more excited than ever to work with Netflix, where they can access the most engaged audiences, with an ad tech platform built to drive results, all centered around series and films that never disappoint,” Netflix ad chief Amy Reinhard wrote in a blog post.
Notable draws for buyers, she said, included returning series like Love Is Blind, Big Mistakes, Bridgerton, Emily in Paris, Nobody Wants This, and Running Point, as well as upcoming feature films including Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew.
Netflix has also pushed aggressively into live sports and sports-adjacent fare, acquiring rights to the WWE’s weekly Raw showcase along with NFL and Major League Baseball games. The 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup saw “extremely high” demand, Reinhard said, with game sponsorships sold out and in-game inventory nearly gone.
The company has also rolled out a new set of ad tools to help buyers. They include programmatic enhancements like enabling deals through the CTV Marketplace or at the instigation of demand-side platforms. The latter enables buyers to transact with Netflix via DSPs they already use, including Google, Amazon, Yahoo or The Trade Desk. Pause ads are also available to buy programmatically across all DSPs.
In announcing the upfront news, Reinhard also said the Media Rating Council has granted accreditation to the Netflix Ads Suite.
Netflix said it is planning its first international upfront events for ad buyers in Mexico City, São Paulo, Tokyo, London, and Paris. At last May’s upfront in New York, Reinhard announced that Netflix’s ad tier, which has grown to 250 million monthly unique users, would expand to 15 additional countries.
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