LOS ANGELES — Veteran filmmaker Michael Ninn, though retired from the adult business for the past 10 years, recently unveiled a new episodic project titled "Catherine II: The Series," which serves as a sequel to his 2005 adult film "Catherine."
The new series is described as a psychological thriller made entirely using AI. It features a fully digital cast. The nudity-free series also boasts original music composed by the late Eddie Van Halen, recorded for the original "Catherine" film.
Produced by Todd Carey and executive produced by Angie Rowntree, the new series follows Audrey Burke (modeled after Audrey Hollander), a woman sentenced to life in prison for the murder of her abusive husband.
Inside the prison's walls, reality begins to unravel. Elizabeth Hart (modeled after Angie Stevenson), a successful journalist and social media influencer, is haunted by visions she can’t explain; Dr. Maxwell (modeled after Todd Carey), the prison psychiatrist, begins to question the boundaries of his profession; and Father McKenzie (modeled after Colin Rowntree), the prison chaplain, clings to his fractured faith as his weekly sermons fall on deaf ears and darkness grows all around him.
At the center of everything is Zara, an evolving AI (modeled after Aerial) growing more sentient — and violent — than anyone realizes.
There’s also Catherine, the titular supernatural force Audrey once claimed guided her hand. She returns from the original film (still played in spirit by Hollander) and continues to linger in the shadows of this sequel.
Instead of sex, "Catherine II: The Series" explores the intersection of AI and justice, and asks what happens when guilt, faith and technology converge — and who we become when someone else takes hold of us.
"Catherine II: The Series" will be released in four 15-minute installments: "The Sentence," "The Healing," "The Warning" and "The Arrival" — which sets the stage for Season 2.
In an interview, Ninn told XBIZ that he is optimistic about further installments, as Season 1 of "Catherine" is already garnering interest from streaming services such as Tubi.
"This new project isn’t nostalgia, it’s evolution," Ninn declares on the project’s official website. "I’ve been exploring what AI can mean to a filmmaker — not as a shortcut, but as a canvas, a partner, and something strangely… alive.
"Every tool we’ve ever held was just a vessel for vision, and this strange and modern brush called AI is no different," writes Ninn. "If you let it, it will challenge you. And if you’re patient, it may even show you a glimpse of its soul."
Ninn, 73, began developing the "Catherine" series nearly two years ago. He used custom-modified AI software to build a large language model based on his own aesthetics, including photography and images that he owned.
"I shot a lot of 8K skin textures and close-ups of eyes, all that kind of stuff, and I started playing with how close I could get them to look to how I wanted them to look," explains Ninn, who says he considers himself "a coder at heart" and has long believed that the era of AI was fast approaching.
"One thing led to another, and eventually the technology got to the point where I was able to start cloning and voice-cloning people in my own database, which is run locally, not off the web," he says.
This "closed system," Ninn explains, uses ComfyUI, which is free and open-source, as well as Automatic 1111 and "a ton of plugins written by incredibly brilliant minds that allow you to add things you can’t get off the shelf."
"I use skin nodes and freckles nodes and a bunch of stuff that's fed into the system to allow me to achieve the look I want," he elaborates.
Colin Rowntree, a fellow retired adult film director who has known Ninn for 25 years, and who served as the basis for Father McKenzie, says he was hugely impressed by Ninn's work on the project.
"Michael is one of the most brilliant people I’ve ever known," marvels Rowntree. "It’s astounding what he did."
To provide the visual input Ninn needed, Rowntree's wife took photos of him from various angles, then turned on a microphone.
"She told me to talk about anything I wanted for a full minute," Rowntree recalls. "For the first 20 seconds, I was supposed to be in a calm, happy mood. Then I had to be in a caring, supportive mood. And for the last 20 seconds, I had to be in a frustrated, angry mood. My wife sent Michael those five photos and the three 20-second clips of me talking, and the next day, it was done!"
Though he has never worked as an adult performer, Rowntree has advice for performers as AI gains momentum in the industry.
"There’s no barrier of entry," he notes. "So as AI takes off and becomes more readily available as a tool that producers can use, I’d be wary of answering a casting call where the producers say, 'Can you read this in a happy voice? And now in a sad voice? Can you do it in a concerned voice? Turn this way, turn that way, thanks for coming.' Because all of a sudden, that person has been digitized with no model release or payment whatsoever.
"New performers who aren’t so savvy about paperwork are going to be taken advantage of, so they should be careful about that," he warns.
Overall, however, Rowntree does not anticipate AI 'replacing' traditional production.
"It’s going to enhance it," he says. "People are still going to want to see real people have sex. AI is a whole different thing. Look at 'The Last of Us.' People love the game, and they made it into a TV series that people also love. They’re two different media, but they intersect and they don’t hurt each other, they enhance each other."
Ninn agrees, concluding that AI is "only going to get more and more powerful."
"It used to take 20 years to map the human genome, and now we can do it in 20 minutes, so I think this will be an unrecognizable world in 5-10 years," he predicts.
"I’m still here — still creating, still chasing the edges of what story and image can do," Ninn promises.
Find more information on "Catherine II: The Series" here, and watch a character reel for Father McKenzie below.
