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Tag: Grady Hendrix

  • Jonathan Levine To Direct Adaptation Of Grady Hendrix Novel ‘Horrorstör’ For Searchlight Pictures

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    Searchlight Pictures has set Jonathan Levine, director of films like Long Shot and 50/50, to helm an adaptation of Horrorstör, the 2014 horror-comedy novel from Grady Hendrix, Deadline can confirm.

    The project comes to Searchlight from New Republic Pictures, which landed film rights in 2020, following an effort by Gail Berman’s The Jackal Group to develop the book for television at Fox.

    Levine also penned the most recent draft of the script for Searchlight, working from one by Hendrix. Brian Oliver will produce for New Republic, alongside Gillian Bohrer for Megamix, Adam Goldworm for Aperture Entertainment, and Brad Fischer. Hendrix will exec produce alongside the book’s publisher, Quirk Books, with VP of Production Richard Ruiz and Production Executive Apolline Berty overseeing the project for Searchlight, reporting to Heads of Production and Development DanTram Nguyen and Katie Goodson-Thomas.

    Reimagining the haunted-house story within the context of a big-box store, Horrorstör takes place in Orsk, a furniture superstore much like IKEA, which begins to be plagued by unexplained phenomena, with broken furniture, mysterious messes, and inexplicable damage appearing overnight. Concerned about corporate image and dwindling morale, the store manager convinces a group of employees to stay overnight to investigate these occurrences.

    While best known for comedies and comedy-dramas like Long Shot, 50/50, and his breakout Sundance prize-winner The Wackness, Levine previously dabbled in horror with Warm Bodies, a 2013 adaptation of the Isaac Marion zombie romance novel, starring Nicholas Hoult and Teresa Palmer, which Summit Entertainment released. In television, he’s worked on the likes of Nine Perfect Strangers and Tell Me Lies. Next up for release is his Paramount/Skydance sports pic Mr. Irrelevant, starring David Corenswet as the NFL’s John Tuggle, which releases Christmas Day.

    A New York Times bestseller, Hendrix is also behind titles like How To Sell Haunted House (set up at Legendary with Sam Raimi’s Ghost House producing), Ankle Snatcher (set up at Columbia with Escape Artists), The Blanks (set up at Netflix with 21 Laps), and Witchcraft For Wayward Girls, among many others in the genre space, which together have sold more than two million copies around the world.

    THR was first to the news on Levine.

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    matthewgrobar

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  • Apple faces lawsuit over alleged use of pirated books for AI training

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    Two authors have filed a lawsuit against Apple, accusing the company of infringing on their copyright by using their books to train its artificial intelligence model without their consent. The plaintiffs, Grady Hendrix and Jennifer Roberson, claimed that Apple used a dataset of pirated copyrighted books that include their works for AI training. They said in their complaint that Applebot, the company’s scraper, can “reach ‘shadow libraries’” made up of unlicensed copyrighted books, including (on information) their own. The lawsuit is currently seeking class action status, due to the sheer number of books and authors found in shadow libraries.

    The main plaintiffs for the lawsuit are Grady Hendrix and Jennifer Roberson, both of whom have multiple books under their names. They said that Apple, one of the biggest companies in the world, did not attempt to pay them for “their contributions to [the] potentially lucrative venture.” Apple has “copied the copyrighted works” of the plaintiffs “to train AI models whose outputs compete with and dilute the market for those very works — works without which Apple Intelligence would have far less commercial value,” they wrote in their filing. “This conduct has deprived Plaintiffs and the Class of control over their work, undermined the economic value of their labor, and positioned Apple to achieve massive commercial success through unlawful means.”

    This is but one of the many lawsuits filed against companies developing generative AI technologies. OpenAI is facing a few, including lawsuits from The New York Times and the oldest nonprofit newsroom in the US. Notably, Anthropic, the AI company behind the Claude chatbot, recently agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a class action piracy complaint also brought by authors. Similar to this case, the writers also accused the company of taking pirated books from online libraries to train its AI technology. The 500,000 authors involved in the case will reportedly get $3,000 per work.

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    Mariella Moon

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