This company is opening a virtual reality multiplex this fall
Los Angeles is set to become home to a very futuristic theater experience this fall, as "new location-based virtual reality venture" Dreamscape Immersive launches a VR multiplex in the city in September.
Using technology based on medical imaging and body mechanics, the start-up is building an interactive experience where you don't just go to the movies, you get up and move in and out of the situation on screen and interact with the content and others watching alongside.
In a Monday news release about funding for the VR theater project, producer Kevin Wall explained Dreamscape as a fourth option or watching platform.
"Today, audiences can see movies in theaters in three formats: 2D, 3D, and IMAX. Dreamscape establishes the fourth platform – VR," he said. "Now, audiences will have the ability to purchase a ticket, step inside of the story and experience it personally in a way never before imagined."
The interactive entertainment company said it plans to get people away from their home technologies (aka watching Netflix on the couch) and bring them out to the movies and shopping centers.
"Audiences can see movies in theaters in three formats: 2D, 3D, and IMAX. Dreamscape establishes the fourth platform."
It plans on showing original experiences and other productions -- but again the company isn't giving much detail on what this VR movie world will look like.
Instead it promising a world where viewers are untethered from the computer, and where you "walk freely with friends within a virtual world, where they see themselves, interact with objects and each other, and experience worlds previously accessible only in their imaginations."
The timeline for this new virtual world is coming up quick. Dreamscape is expected to open a VR multiplex at Westfield's Century City Mall in LA this September.
The team has a fair amount of experience in wowing audiences; Wall is an award-winning producer with numerous live concerts under his belt and co-chairman Walter Parkes helped create DreamWorks Pictures, Variety reports.
On Monday, the group announced a Series A round of funding from investors including Warner Bros., 21st Century Fox, MGM, IMAX, Westfield and director Steven Spielberg. Maybe we'll be seeing yet another Jurassic Park film, but this time you get to walk around with the dinosaurs.
Topics Virtual Reality
Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.
