It's not just gamers and aspiring filmmakers who are getting involved in virtual reality. It's attracting some big Hollywood talent, too.
Brothers Anthony and Joe Russo, the brain trust behind "Captain America: Civil War" and Marvel's upcoming "Infinity War" movies, are interested in the potential of the technology, too, and will be using their branded entertainment company, Bullitt, to explore the space.
"We're looking at ways to expand that company," Joe Russo told The Hollywood Reporter during the Beijing leg of the "Civil War" press tour. "We feel a lot of the future of storytelling is going to be in the VR space. The possibilities do feel limitless. We've spent 100 years understanding film as two-hour, closed-ended stories."
Right now, the Russos are fundraising capital for their company. Joe Russo continued to explain how Marvel changed the game by creating open-ended narratives that continued from film to film.
He sees the next step in storytelling to include immersive stories where viewers can choose what happens next. That's where VR comes into the picture. Not only does Joe Russo see virtual reality as an individual activity, he envisions it as an opportunity to be a shared experience between family and friends who can be hundreds of miles away.
"What's going to happen to movie theaters? Is it a bunch of people in a movie theater with VR headsets because you still want a communal experience? Or are you going to be sitting at home on your couch because it's so immersive that it doesn't matter where your body is and who's actually around you, and the communal experience is on the inside?" he asks. "Maybe the communal experience is in the immersive space, where you're with your cousin who's actually halfway across the country but then you meet in the VR space to choose a path through a story together. We'll only know how this medium works once certain things start to dictate viewing habits on a communal level, and then we'll go 'Oh, that's what's working.' In the meantime, lots of things will be tried — and how fun is that?"
Many things are being tested and tried.
At this year's Tribeca Film Festival, I recently had the opportunity to try out over a dozen virtual reality experiences from filmmakers. From live action shorts to mini documentaries and small animated features, some of the projects were pretty immersive, allowing you to walk around in a 360-degree space, but it's not the interactive, social experience which Joe Russo imagines for virtual reality. At least not yet anyway. We can't experience games and film in VR with anyone else. Who's to say we're that far off from doing that, though?
