The podcast Serial is being adapted to a TV series, but it has also inspired at least one other project. Apple nabbed Are You Sleeping, a new drama series starring Oscar winner Octavia Spencer, Deadline reports.
The project is based on Kathleen Barber’s 2017 novel of the same name, which centers on a woman and her family dealing with the pain of having a true-crime podcast question the guilt of the boy who murdered her father. Barber wrote the book following the success of Serial. She admitted in a 17Scribes interview that she got swept up in the story and her first draft of Are You Sleeping was “a way for [her] to work through” her “obsession” with the podcast. Specifically, she was concerned with her lack of empathy for the people involved.
“I realized I had been thinking about them as characters in an entertaining drama, rather than very real people who were part of a very real tragedy,” she said. “I generally think of myself as an empathetic person who is concerned with other people’s feelings, and so I realized that if I was doing that, surely many other people were too.”
Barber critiques our response to true-crime stories in the book, and the TV adaptation will do the same. Interestingly enough, it will do so with the help of Serial creator, producer, and host Sarah Koenig, who is set to consult on the project. Meanwhile, the series is created and written by Nichelle Tramble Spellman, who previously worked on The Good Wife and Justified.
Are You Sleeping comes from Chernin Entertainment and Endeavor Content as well as Reese Witherspoon’s production company, Hello Sunshine, which is riding high after its success with HBO’s Big Little Lies. Witherspoon is an executive producer alongside Spencer, Tramble Spellman, Lauren Neustadter, Peter Chernin, Jenno Topping, and Kristen Campo.
There are a lot of elements to like here. Not only is there the critique of the true-crime craze, we are also interested to see more from Spencer, who seems to continuously garner acting accolades.
No release date for Are You Sleeping has been announced.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?
YouTube is changing how its Home page works, giving viewers more control over what shows up there and making some of the app’s most-used sections easier to reach. Custom Feeds are now replacing the existing topic chips for eligible users, while YouTube is also testing a redesigned top bar on mobile that moves Subscriptions closer to the Home feed.
YouTube first started experimenting with Custom Feeds earlier this year, letting you type out what you wanted to watch and turning that request into its own stream of recommendations. Now, the feature is starting to look less like a side experiment and more like something YouTube actually wants people to use as part of their everyday Home page.