I watched the seven-minute short at 2 a.m. and felt my phone buzz with a single notification: Portrait of God was being expanded into a feature. You sit up—there’s a name at the top of the page that changes how you read every credit. I tell you this because casting can flip a whisper into a headline.
I’m telling you as someone who follows how horror momentum builds: Sam Raimi and Jordan Peele are producing, Dylan Clark is directing and co-writing, and Lionsgate has just greenlit the feature. Now an A-list star is attached—Chase Infiniti, fresh from The Testaments and One Battle After Another, will headline the feature version of Clark’s viral short. That combination turns curiosity into real stakes.
A midnight screening chatter about auteurs led to a studio memo.
Raimi’s name has weight; Peele’s name has a pulse. Put them together and you create a pressure cooker that filmmakers and financiers watch closely. Lionsgate confirmed in a press release that production is moving forward, which means budgets, release strategies and marketing teams start to orient around a single question: how do you sell a religious-painting horror anchored by a star known for dramatic work?
The project is a slow-burning fuse. That statement matters because it explains why the short’s 10 million YouTube views over four years aren’t just a vanity metric—they’re a signal investors and distributors read, especially when the short lives on YouTube and Vimeo and a studio like Lionsgate wants scale.
Who is Chase Infiniti and what has she done?
Chase Infiniti broke out with performances in The Testaments and the war drama One Battle After Another. You’ve likely seen her on festival circuits and streaming lineups where savvy casting directors tracked her range from subtlety to intensity. Her move into horror is strategic: it places a familiar face at the center of an uncanny concept and gives marketing a human anchor to sell the dread.
A film festival aisle conversation reminded me how shorts become features.
Dylan Clark’s original seven-minute short—available on his YouTube channel and on Vimeo—has always felt like a keyhole into dread. The short’s premise is spare: a religious girl confronts a provocative painting of God. That small frame is what made it viral; expanding it into a feature invites risk and reward in equal measure.
Clark’s feature debut reimagining The Blair Witch Project is already scheduled with Lionsgate for September 24, 2027, which tells you he’s on studio radars. Raimi also has a separate Lionsgate project, a modern take on William Goldman’s Magic, the author of the novel that inspired the eerie 1978 film starring Anthony Hopkins. Those attachments matter: they give the new film industry credibility ahead of a single frame of footage.
When will Portrait of God be released?
No firm release date has been announced for the feature. Right now, priorities are clear: finish Blair Witch (September 24, 2027 on Lionsgate’s slate) and then move Chase Infiniti’s new horror into production. That timeline shapes press cycles, festival plans, and how Lionsgate will plot a rollout across streaming and theatrical windows.
A friend at a podcast said casting can change the tone of a film’s conversation.
You should expect marketing to tie Infiniti’s previous roles to this new horror turn, aiming social clips at fans who follow Riley Keough-style career moves or the conversation threads on Twitter and Reddit. Industry tools like IMDbPro, Box Office Mojo and social analytics platforms will track early sentiment, while Lionsgate’s PR cadence will shepherd coverage from genre outlets to mainstream entertainment pages.
This movie will be measured against the short’s tenor and the pedigree behind it—Raimi’s visceral instincts and Peele’s cultural lens—and that mix often makes genre headlines before a single trailer drops.
What is the short about and why did it matter?
The seven-minute film’s description is simple: “A religious girl must come to terms with her faith when she analyzes a provocative painting of God.” It mattered because it compressed theological unease and visual provocation into a tight, shareable clip, and viewers rewarded that compression with 10 million views across platforms. Studios watch those numbers like weather reports.
If you’re tracking how horror gets made today, note the players: Sam Raimi, Jordan Peele, Dylan Clark, Lionsgate, and now Chase Infiniti. Each name functions as a signal to different audiences—genre purists, mainstream viewers, festival programmers, and streaming algorithms. The combination is a storm cloud over standard studio output and a bet on appetite for art that unsettles.
I’ll watch how Lionsgate packages the film and how publicity leans on Infiniti’s casting, Raimi’s legacy, and Peele’s influence. You can watch the short on Clark’s YouTube channel or Vimeo, and consider this: when a short becomes a feature with that lineup, is it a safe bet or a provocation designed to rewrite what mainstream horror looks like?