AceShowbiz - Wishful Thinking is a narrative feature competing at SXSW, directed and written by Graham Parkes. The film follows Julia and Charlie, a couple in Portland, Oregon, struggling to mend their fractured relationship. Julia is an ambitious game designer, while Charlie is a musician who works in sound design to make ends meet. Pressured by Julia's friend, they attend a couples-therapy seminar led by twin healers known as the Tillies, who claim to repair relationships through energy work.

The therapy triggers a cosmic karmic system that causes the state of their relationship to impact the world around them, threatening everything from earthquakes to the stock market and even entire nations. Faced with this extraordinary challenge, Julia and Charlie must decide if their love can endure amid such widespread chaos.

The film features Maya Hawke, Lewis Pullman, Jake Shane, and Kerri Kenney-Silver, with the sales rights handled by UTA. It premiered on March 16, 2026, during the festival.

Maya Hawke described the project as both exhilarating and demanding. She said, "Graham's idea was a playpen, it was like a sandbox. For an actor, it's so fun to be raging out and then kissing. And then, you have your heart broken and you're depressed on the carpet. And then, you're up and you're dancing." She emphasized the high energy required, calling it an exhausting movie. According to Hawke, each day of filming pushed her and co-star Lewis Pullman to their limits physically and emotionally.

"At the end of every day, Lewis and I were like, 'Woah, that was so hard!' It was one of the most fun but difficult—it wasn't difficult in a painful way, it was just, you were asking everything of your body. It was almost like working in animation, where you have to be so big, because you're just like a rubber ball bouncing on the ground," she explained.

The film's unique blend of relationship drama and supernatural elements offers a dynamic acting playground, allowing performers to explore a wide emotional range within a high-stakes narrative. The Deadline Studio at SXSW event, presented by Redbreast Irish Whiskey, provided a platform to discuss the film and its creative process in depth.