HBO Max assembles a sexy dream team—ft. Idris Elba and Keanu Reeves—to read you bedtime stories.
Remember in the early days of quarantine when celebrities were framing their Instagram attention-seeking as a public service? (Okay, yes, we were as guilty as anyone of writing breathless blogs about stars generously reading books aloud, but in our defense, we were in a literary news drought!)
Well, now it’s July, and HBO Max is monetizing the now-proven model of “very hot celebrity reads to you” with the new series A World of Calm. The show (presented in partnership with the sleep app Calm, naturally), will feature a gaggle of genetically gifted people—including Idris Elba, Mahershala Ali, Zoë Kravitz, Lucy Liu, and Keanu Reeves—reading “bedtime stories for grown ups.”
HBO Max describes the stories as “scientifically-engineered narratives” which will “naturally calm your body and soothe the mind.”
Can’t believe I’ve been trying to self-soothe with unscientific narratives, like some kind of sucker.
In all seriousness, though, kudos to HBO Max and the Calm app for assembling such a dream team of hot people with which to capitalize on our collective existential terror.
[via The Wrap]
Jessie Gaynor
Jessie Gaynor is a senior editor at Lit Hub whose writing has appeared in McSweeney's, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. Her debut novel, The Glow was published by Random House in 2023. You can buy it here.
