At the Venice Film Festival, director Doug Liman shared new details about his technologically ambitious extended reality (XR) sci-fi project, Asteroid.
The official logline for the project reads: "A group of strangers takes a used Russian Soyuz rocket to a nearby, treasure-laden asteroid in a modern-day "gold rush" for a chance at unimaginable wealth."
Making up that group of strangers are several marquee names including Hailee Steinfeld, Rhenzy Feliz, Ron Perlman, Freida Pinto, Leon Mandel, and NFL wide receiver DK Metcalf.
While in Venice, Liman shared with Deadline that his content studio he co-owns, is always looking to push the envelope forward when it comes to technology in filmmaking.
In order to view extended reality (XR) content, specific hardware is needed such as a VR headset such as HTC Vive or PlayStation VR. Other devices that can display the content include AR Smart Glasses such as XReal Air or Apple Vision Pro. A select number of smartphones and tablets are also capable of displaying XR content.
“At 30 Ninjas, our mission has been to embrace new technology and storytelling. I have always been interested in movies that reflect the moment they’re made — that can be through the content, but also, the technology," said Liman.
He continued, “I’m a huge fan of Jim Cameron because he’s on the cutting edge. He’s telling stories that couldn’t have been told until that moment in time.”
“Right from the beginning, my career has been intertwined with advances in technology and obviously with Asteroid, this is by far the most ambitious thing I’ve ever done. It’s a giant Hollywood movie idea told in a VR headset and that just hasn’t existed before. The reason I’m so proud of it, is it was so friggin’ hard to make and why I now get why it hasn’t existed before...Asteroid is a story I’ve been wanting to tell for a long time … in my movies, I pride myself on my world building, and part of the world building is the visual spectacle but it’s also about the characters,” said Liman.
“In the way that The Bourne Identity changed how you looked at a spy movie, I’ve been very interested in doing movies or stories told in outer space with characters who have no business in being there. Characters who look up at the moon and see money, not romance..In Asteroid, five of them are cramming into a Soyuz capsule that’s designed for three because they think there’s a trillion dollars to be made on an asteroid that’s passing near Earth.”
Asteroid is divided into 2 parts, with the first segment consisting of a live-action, 180-degree short film that immerses viewers in an intriguing and somewhat chaotic journey to an asteroid, recounting the antics that the space capsule voyagers get into before and during the trip.
The second segment is much more interactive, as viewers receive an SOS message from one of the passengers. The character then shifts to an interactive AI facsimile that interacts with viewers and tasks them with getting to the bottom of how and why tragedy befell the space mission.
Liman has stated that he hopes to turn the XR project into a feature-length film or TV series one day.