TheaterEars Launches Director's Experience for NEON's IT ENDS, Bringing Alexander Ullom's Commentary Into the Theater Alongside the Film
Beginning August 28, moviegoers can hear the director's synchronized commentary during the film's theatrical run
New York, NY — August 26, 2026 — TheaterEars, Inc. today announced the Director's Experience release of It Ends, writer-director Alexander Ullom's debut feature, distributed by NEON. Beginning Friday, August 28, audiences at participating theaters nationwide can listen to Ullom's commentary track in real time, synchronized to the film as it plays, using only the TheaterEars app on their own phone and a pair of headphones.
How It Works
Moviegoers download the free TheaterEars app, select It Ends and their showtime to get the track on their phone, then press play when the movie starts. The app synchronizes Ullom's commentary to the projected film and works across all formats including RealD and 4DX.
The app is free to download from the App Store and Google Play and is free to use (ad-supported) for the Director’s Experience during any standard showtime at participating locations, providing the moviegoer with premium audio experience without an additional ticket upcharge.
"Commentary tracks have always arrived after the fact, months later, on a disc or a stream, to an audience that has already moved on. It Ends is a film built out of conversation, and Alex is a filmmaker whose audience found him online and then showed up in theaters. Putting his voice in that room, while the film is still on screens, is exactly the thing we built this for." — Dan Mangru, Founder & CEO, TheaterEars
Why It Ends
It Ends follows four recent graduates who leave for a late-night snack run and turn onto a two-lane road that never bends, never ends, and is bordered by something that does not want them to stop. Most of the film unfolds inside a single Jeep Cherokee. Ullom, who wrote, directed, and edited the film, has called the mode "hangout horror" — dread built out of conversation, silence, and the slow erosion of four friendships rather than out of setpieces.
That construction makes it an unusually good candidate for the Director's Experience. A film shot largely in one vehicle, carried by performance and cut, is a film where knowing what the director was solving in a given shot changes what the audience is watching.
It Ends joins a Director's Experience roster spanning first-run studio releases and anniversary engagements of modern classics — Project Hail Mary, Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu, Toy Story 5, Wet Hot American Summer, and La La Land — covering original science fiction, franchise event filmmaking, animation, cult comedy, the modern movie musical, and now independent horror from a first-time filmmaker.
About the Filmmaker: Alexander Ullom
Alexander Ullom was born and raised in Tampa, Florida, and is now based in Los Angeles. He began university studying computer science and redirected toward filmmaking at eighteen, going on to study at Florida State University's College of Motion Picture Arts — where he met producers Carrie Carusone and Evan Barber, both of whom would go on to produce It Ends. His pre-feature work screened at Academy Award–qualifying festivals and drew recognition from the Student Emmy Awards.
The financing story for It Ends has become part of the film's lore. Ullom posted a comedy sketch to YouTube that went viral; a commenter wrote that they would pay for more of it, and the exchange turned into the film's first money. He cast all four of his leads — Phinehas Yoon, Akira Jackson, Noah Toth, and Mitchell Cole — off Instagram and shot the feature in 20 shooting days.
In 2024, ahead of the film's premiere, Ullom was named one of Filmmaker Magazine's "25 New Faces of Independent Film." It Ends premiered in competition at SXSW 2025 and was acquired for theatrical distribution by NEON. Ullom is represented by UTA, Entertainment 360, and McKuin Frankel Whitehead.
About TheaterEars
TheaterEars is a mobile platform that delivers synchronized supplemental audio to moviegoers through the phones and headphones they already carry. The company was built to solve a problem the industry had long treated as unsolvable: how to give different audiences different audio in the same auditorium, at the same showtime, without asking a single theater to install new hardware.
The platform's original use case was Spanish-language dubbing, making first-run American films accessible to Spanish-speaking moviegoers at any participating theater. It has since expanded to include audio description for blind and low-vision audiences and, most recently, the Director's Experience, in-theater director’s commentary.
The platform has more than 4 million registered users, and has worked with studios including Disney, Universal, Paramount, Sony, Warner Bros., Amazon MGM, and more. Lin-Manuel Miranda serves as the company's Global Ambassador. The app is available as a free download on iOS and Android, Learn more at theaterears.com/directors-experience.
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