Hollywood
Actress Abigail Breslin signs publishing debut with Harper Collins
MUMBAI: Award winning actress Abigail Breslin, best known to millions for her Academy Award-nominated breakthrough role in Little Miss Sunshine, has solidified herself over the years as one of the rising stars of young Hollywood. Breslin will soon be making her publishing debut with her book called This May Sound Crazy, which will be published by HarperCollins.
She will also be seen in her upcoming television debut role on Fox’s highly anticipated Ryan Murphy’s Scream Queens, has multiple films on the horizon, and a solo album titled The World Now scheduled for release 15 June, 2015.
Written with Breslin’s wit and honesty, This May Sound Crazy is full of cautionary tales and clever advice ranging from why you should stop stalking your ex to how to survive your very own Halloween horror story. In this collection of nonfiction essays, Breslin brings her hilarious and heartfelt voice to the page as she explores the things nearest and dearest to every teen—love, loss, and Tumblr.
“I started my tumblr Mixtapes and Winter Coats because I wanted to share my late night ramblings and feels, such as talking to my cat at 2 am, with all of you. That blog evolved into my book, This May Sound Crazy. I hope when you read it, you’ll see that you are not alone even when you’re wondering when it’s ok to text your crush first, which is the most terrifying situation ever,” says Breslin.
“I’m so thrilled to be working with Abigail Breslin on This May Sound Crazy. She channels the angst of her generation with a fearlessness that’s at once hilarious and deeply moving. Anyone who’s ever had a broken heart or felt lost or who just wished for a perfect Christmas Day will feel instantly understood in these pages,” adds HarperCollins executive editor Dave Linker.
World rights for This May Sound Crazy were sold to Linker from CAA and will be published in October 2015.
Hollywood
Utopai Studios partners Huace to deploy PAI for long form content
Deal includes revenue sharing as Huace adopts AI engine across global ops
MUMBAI: Lights, camera… algorithm, the script just got a silicon co-writer. In a move that signals how storytelling itself is being re-engineered, U.S.-based Utopai Studios has partnered China’s Huace Film & TV Co. Ltd. to bring artificial general intelligence into the heart of long-form content creation.
At the centre of the deal is PAI, Utopai’s cinematic storytelling system, which Huace will deploy as a core engine across its production pipeline from development and creative iteration to global localisation. The partnership includes a large-scale annual usage commitment from Huace, alongside a usage-based revenue-sharing model, underscoring both ambition and commercial confidence on both sides.
For Huace, one of China’s largest film and television companies, the bet is not on automation alone but on scale with control. With distribution spanning over 200 countries and a presence across more than 20 international platforms, including Netflix and YouTube, the company brings a vast content ecosystem where even marginal efficiency gains can translate into significant output shifts. Its extensive TV IP library further positions it as fertile ground for AI-assisted storytelling workflows.
The choice of PAI follows what Huace described as a rigorous evaluation of existing AI tools, many of which remain limited to fragmented use cases such as video generation or editing. What tipped the scales, according to the company, was PAI’s ability to handle long-form narrative complexity maintaining continuity, structure, and creative coherence across entire story arcs rather than isolated clips.
Utopai, for its part, is using the partnership to anchor its international expansion strategy, pitching PAI as an enterprise-ready system built for customisation, privacy, and regulatory adaptability across markets. That positioning becomes particularly relevant as global media companies increasingly scrutinise how AI integrates into proprietary workflows.
The timing is notable. Earlier this month, Utopai upgraded PAI to support three-minute 4K video generation and advanced multi-shot sequencing features designed to tackle one of AI storytelling’s biggest hurdles: consistency across scenes.
What emerges is not just another tech collaboration, but a glimpse into how the grammar of filmmaking could evolve. Because if stories were once crafted frame by frame, the next chapter might just be coded scene by scene.
