Portrait of God Moves to Lionsgate With Chase Infiniti Starring

Dylan Clark’s Portrait of God is moving forward at Lionsgate, with Chase Infiniti set to star and Sam Raimi and Jordan Peele producing.

The October 1 development is more than a casting update. Deadline reports that Lionsgate acquired the project after it left Universal and that the feature has been greenlit for production. Variety and The Hollywood Reporter also report Infiniti’s casting and the film’s new studio home.

Clark will direct from a screenplay he co-wrote with Joe Russo. Raimi and Rob Tapert are producing through Ghost House Pictures, while Peele and Win Rosenfeld are producing through Monkeypaw Productions. Russo is also a producer.

The feature expands a short horror film Clark released online in 2022. What it expands into, however, is still being kept under wraps.

Contextual hero photograph: Jordan Peele at SXSW in 2019, not imagery from the Portrait of God production. Photo by Daniel Benavides via Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC BY 2.0. Cropped and resized for web.

What the current reporting confirms

The current status can be stated cleanly:

• Lionsgate has acquired Portrait of God.
• Chase Infiniti is attached to star.
• Dylan Clark is directing.
• Clark and Joe Russo wrote the screenplay.
• Sam Raimi and Jordan Peele are producing through Ghost House and Monkeypaw, alongside their producing partners.
• The project is based on Clark’s 2022 short film of the same name.
• The feature’s detailed plot has not been publicly revealed.
• No release date has been announced.
• No public production start date has been announced.

Those last unknowns matter because the original short is compact enough that a feature version will necessarily need room to expand. Trade reporting describes the movie as growing out of the short, but that does not tell us which characters, locations or pieces of mythology will carry over.

Until Lionsgate releases a synopsis, trailer or additional production information, the safest description is simple: this is a feature adaptation of Clark’s religious-horror short, not a scene-for-scene remake whose complete story is already known.

The original Portrait of God is a seven-minute religious-horror short

Clark released Portrait of God online in August 2022.

The short follows a religious young woman preparing a presentation about a painting called Portrait of God. The premise turns on an unnerving question: some people looking at the work report seeing only darkness, while others believe they can make out a figure within it. The presentation becomes a confrontation with what the painting might contain and what seeing it would mean for the woman’s faith.

Clark’s own Vimeo upload describes the story as a religious girl confronting her faith while analyzing a provocative painting. The original short is also available through Clark’s YouTube upload, linked above.

The film uses religious imagery as horror fiction. Nothing about the short or the feature announcement should be presented as evidence for a real supernatural painting, apparition or theological claim.

The short was built as a small personal production

The scale of the original film makes the Lionsgate move notable.

A 2023 report from The Ithacan described Portrait of God as a roughly seven-minute project made by a small team while Clark was a student at Ithaca College. The production was a personal project rather than a class assignment, and the report described a small crew working over several shooting days.

By early 2023, the short had already passed one million YouTube views. By the time the feature project reached major studios, trade coverage was describing an audience in the many millions.

That trajectory fits a wider shift in horror filmmaking. The Associated Press has reported on digital-native filmmakers whose short-form online work becomes a calling card for studio features. Clark’s film is now one of the clearest horror examples of that path.

Chase Infiniti joins after the project changes studios

The feature was previously set up at Universal.

Universal acquired Clark’s feature script in late 2025, with Raimi and Peele already attached as producers. The project later entered turnaround, allowing another studio to take it over.

Lionsgate has now done exactly that.

The studio change also connects Portrait of God to Clark’s other major feature assignment: he is attached to direct Lionsgate’s new Blair Witch film. That does not mean the two projects share a universe, story or production schedule. It simply means Lionsgate now has two separate horror projects tied to Clark.

Morbid Index has a separate guide to the invented mythology and real-world history behind The Blair Witch Project, which is useful context for another Clark project built around horror that manipulates what an audience believes is real.

Raimi and Peele are producing together for the first time

The project also brings together two producers with different horror legacies.

Sam Raimi’s work ranges from the Evil Dead films to studio supernatural horror. Jordan Peele’s films have used horror to explore identity, perception and social systems. Their involvement does not tell us what the finished Portrait of God will look like, and neither producer has been announced as the director.

What trade reporting does establish is that this is their first producing collaboration.

Sam Raimi at San Diego Comic-Con in 2014. Photo by Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC BY-SA 2.0. Resized for web.

The distinction matters because famous producer names can easily become shorthand for creative control that has not actually been announced. Clark remains the director, and Clark and Russo are the credited screenwriters in the current reporting.

What the feature has not revealed yet

There are still major unanswered questions.

Lionsgate has not publicly announced:

• the name of Infiniti’s character;
• whether the protagonist from the short will return unchanged;
• additional cast members;
• a full synopsis;
• a production start date;
• a theatrical or streaming release date;
• whether the feature will preserve the short’s tightly contained structure;
• how much new mythology the screenplay adds around the painting.

Those gaps make speculation especially easy. The short is built around ambiguity, and a feature adaptation could take that ambiguity in many directions.

For now, the original film is the only reliable guide to the concept’s starting point — not a confirmed outline of the feature’s complete plot.

Why this is a strong fit for Morbid Index

Portrait of God sits at the intersection Morbid Index covers best: modern horror fiction, internet-born genre work and the way frightening stories accumulate new layers as they move between formats.

It also offers a useful contrast with the Backrooms, where an online horror concept expanded through collaborative internet folklore before moving toward a major screen adaptation. Portrait of God has a different origin: one filmmaker, one short and one self-contained fictional premise.

That difference matters. The film is not folklore in the historical sense, and its religious imagery is not evidence of a paranormal claim. It is a modern horror story whose online success is now carrying it into studio production.

The next meaningful update should come from Lionsgate: a full synopsis, production start, additional casting, first-look imagery or a release date.

Until then, the confirmed story is already substantial: a small 2022 religious-horror short has become a greenlit Lionsgate feature, Chase Infiniti is starring, Dylan Clark is directing, and Sam Raimi and Jordan Peele are producing it together.

Sources & further reading

• Deadline: Chase Infiniti Boards Dylan Clark Horror Film Portrait of God as It Moves to Lionsgate (October 1, 2026)
• Variety: Chase Infiniti to Star in Portrait of God at Lionsgate (October 1, 2026)
• The Hollywood Reporter: Chase Infiniti to Star in Dylan Clark Horror Movie Portrait of God for Lionsgate (October 1, 2026)
• TheWrap: Lionsgate acquires Portrait of God from Universal (October 1, 2026)
• Dylan Clark: Portrait of God short film on Vimeo
• The Ithacan: Short horror film spooks 1 million on Youtube (March 8, 2023)
• Associated Press: From YouTube to Hollywood, digital creators are remaking the movie business (2026)