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.”
