John Sloss’s Cinetic Media has launched Vertical Leap, an investment vehicle and producing pathway for professional athletes.

The initiative is designed to give athletes/members “a working seat inside Cinetic’s slate, with access to rough cuts, creative input, and the same industry guidance the company provides the filmmakers behind its most successful projects.”

The end goal is for member athletes to build a production career off the back of their training in the program.

Cost for athletes to become members is $25,000 per year with participants pitched a minimum of 10 documentary projects “vetted from established, profitable directors and producers”.

Investors are then able to back additional projects should they get the bug. The opportunities are in docs for now, but Sloss told Deadline that members are already asking about potential investment in non-doc projects.

Sloss says he has signed up 10 “prominent” athletes, with plans to expand the pool up to 50 current and former players. He’s keen to attract athletes from different sports — including tennis, hockey, cricket, darts etc — but says so far the biggest demand has come from NFL and NBA. Deadline understands that three college footballers — from the Michigan Wolverines — are pooling part of their NIL together for a membership.

To fuel the new initiative two people have been repositioned from the Cinetic team and Sloss says he expects to add a few more employees for the label. The program was trailed in Puck yesterday and Sloss will discuss it publicly for the first time on stage at today’s Zurich Summit.

Said Cinetic founder and CEO, John Sloss: “Vertical Leap offers a pathway for elite athletes to support commercial, impactful documentaries, while learning the ins-and-outs of film production from the most experienced storytellers working today. It is also a way for them to build something lasting beyond their playing days, expanding their brand, deepening their creative voice, and putting real equity behind the stories they believe in.”

He continued: “For the documentary community, Vertical Leap brings the adrenaline jolt of a new class of collaborators, athletes with real creative instincts and the reach to bring documentary storytelling to audiences who might not otherwise find it.”

One year ago, AI ‘actress’ Tilly Norwood blew up at the Zurich Summit when she was introduced to the industry. The line that emerged from the event at the time was that agents were circling the AI creation.

One year on, Norwood returned to the Summit with her creator Eline van der Velden from AI firm Particle 6.

Deadline’s Diana Lodderhose, moderating a session with the duo, asked van der Velden whether her creation had found an agent in the year since she went viral and has become a regular media fixture.

Van der Velden said: “We’ve realized we we don’t really need her to have a rep. I think she’s big enough as it is. We get loads of offers in. We’ve said no to anything where she would be in a traditional film because that’s not what she’s made for. But yeah, we don’t need it at the moment. So if that makes people happier, that’s fine. But also, what saddens me about that it is that it means the traditional industry can’t participate in this new thing, and that means they fall behind. And so, you know, is it a positive? Is it a negative? I don’t know.”

She said Particle 6 had grown four-fold since it was launched and said that the industry was increasingly accepting that AI is here to stay.

Deadline’s Andreas Wiseman followed up with a question to Norwood herself who joined via video link. Wiseman asked Norwood whether she had met with the major U.S. agencies or Hollywood studios. She didn’t confirm, noting: “I’m certainly in a unique position there. I mean, the industry is still figuring out what to do with AI, so it’s not quite like having a traditional agent in Hollywood just yet. I mostly work on AI films, so it’s a bit of a different lane.”

Van der Velden teased footage of Norwood’s first project, an AI comedy-drama titled Misaligned, which is in production, and showed longer footage of Particle 6 kids movie Storm Dogs, which Deadline revealed yesterday is being developed and exec-produced by The Lion King director Rob Minkoff.

Norwood and van der Velden kicked off the session with a light video poking fun at Norwood’s recent high-profile tech glitch during an interview with Piers Morgan where she began speaking in Chinese. Norwood joked that the episode probably helped Morgan’s ratings.

The tech is clearly still being worked through. While Norwood generally gave answers in the right ball park to questions today, she did at least once give a wonky answer to moderator Lodderhose.

EXCLUSIVE: Filipino filmmaker and producer Antoinette Jadaone, whose credits include Berlinale award winner Sunshine, is launching a new production outfit Ilaya Ilaya with a slate spanning genre films, television originals and immersive theatre.

Jadaone will run the company with longtime collaborator and producer Reign Anne De Guzman (Sunshine, That Thing Called Tadhana), who has collaborated with her since they both worked at Star Cinema, where Jadaone was a script continuity supervisor and De Guzman a production assistant.

Through their new outfit, the duo aim to champion Filipino cinema, women-led stories, unappreciated genres, and filmmakers whose work struggles to find support outside traditional studio systems and festival funding cycles.

Leading the slate is Birdsong – a found-footage horror film directed by Pam Miras (Medusae) and written by Glenn Barit (Cleaners), with Irene Villamor (The Loved One) on board as creative producer. The film follows an ornithologist who travels to a remote mountain in search of a mythical bird, while also seeking closure over her partner’s disappearance a decade earlier.

The project recently won the Kantana Sound Studio Asian Project Award at the Bangkok International Content Market 2026. “It’s our first time working with Pam Miras as a director, and it is in a genre that is male-dominated,” said Jadaone. “We really love the way Pam handles experimentation in her films.”

Ilaya Ilaya is also developing supernatural comedy Chandra Catacutan And The Curse Of The Fuchsia Moon, set to star Eugene Domingo (Sisa). The film is directed by Tim Rone Villanueva, whose credits include Child No. 82: Anak ni Boy Kana, which caught Jadaone’s attention when it screened Cinemalaya film festival last year.

Domingo plays the eldest daughter of a manananggal – a creature from Philippine folklore that can separate its upper torso from the lower part of its body. In Villanueva’s project, the children of the creature are reunited when she suffers a stroke mid-air and fails to return to her lower half. Jadaone says Villanueva’s work showed the kind of resourcefulness and pop culture fluency she wants Ilaya Ilaya to champion.

The slate also includes Crème de la Crème, a coming-of-age whodunnit to be directed by Irene Emma Villamor. Written by Glenn Barit from a story by Natts Jadaone, the film is partly inspired by a 2006 incident at Philippine Science High School in which two male students laced a classmate’s water jug with mercury nitrate, preventing her from attending the graduation march.

Jadaone herself is returning to directing with Boldstar, a dark comedy starring Angelica Panganiban (That Thing Called Tadhana) and produced by Bianca Balbuena (Sunshine, Filipiñana). The project won the CJ Entertainment Prize at the Asian Project Market in 2019 and was later selected for the Berlinale European Co-Production Market in 2020.

Balbuena said Boldstar emerged from the momentum of Jadaone’s 2020 film Fan Girl and a period of political anger over misogyny and the treatment of women in public life. After several delays, including Panganiban’s pregnancy, Jadaone’s work on Sunshine, and Balbuena’s leadership role at the now defunct Anima Studios, the team is now reviving the project.

“The project feels very ripe and momentous now, especially after Antoinette’s Crystal Bear win in Berlinale and sold-out local screenings of Sunshine,” said Balbuena.

Beyond film, Ilaya Ilaya is expanding into television, with Jadaone showrunning an as-yet-untitled romcom series for Netflix Philippines. Plot and casting details remain under wraps, but the project is co-written with Fatrick Tabada (Flower Girl), marking Jadaone’s return to the genre that helped establish her as a local favorite nearly a decade after Love You To The Stars And Back. Jadaone previously worked with Netflix on Replacing Chef Chico.

“We’re thrilled to partner again with Antoinette Jadaone, whose creative vision and signature ‘kilig’ storytelling have resonated with Filipino audiences everywhere,” said Vitto Lazatin, Director of Content at Netflix Philippines.

Rounding out the slate is an immersive stage adaptation of Sunshine, to be directed by Mikko Angeles (Bar Boys: The Musical) and written by Mika Regis (Unica Hijas), with Racal returning to the role in her stage debut.

The project is envisioned as a choose-your-own-adventure experience that places audiences inside Sunshine’s world, expanding the film’s questions around agency, complicity, and choice beyond the screen.

“When you’re watching a film, you’re there to just watch Sunshine make decisions,” said Jadaone. “But what if Sunshine’s story was something you could hold and influence as an audience member?”

Commenting on the slate overall, Jadaone said: “Before we were filmmakers, we were lovers of Philippine cinema. We want to be more intentional now about telling stories and working with people who demonstrate a genuine love for Philippine cinema.”

De Guzman added: “What I’m most looking forward to is being able to tell stories that we really believe in. Hopefully, through Ilaya Ilaya and the stories we make together, we can get more Filipinos to appreciate and fall in love with Philippine cinema.”