40 years after 'Tron', filmmakers move to metaverse

WASHINGTON: "To create engagement, you have to have a story. In the metaverse, the creators will create the stories, and the stories they tell will create the community, just like at the beginning of time. The king's storyteller kept people engaged, Shakespeare kept people engaged," said American film producer Donald Kushner, whose 1982 film 'Tron' is considered to be cinema's first-ever portrayal of the metaverse.

According to Variety, a US-based entertainment portal, Kushner spoke about storytelling in the age of metaverse at the Red Sea International Film Festival.

"(Tron) was the first film to use computer animation. When we were producing the movie, there were four companies in the U.S. that did computer animation, and we booked them for an entire year. Today someone could create that in an afternoon. That's how far we've come," said Kushner at the festival.

According to Variety, Yat Siu, co-founder and executive chairman of Hong Kong's Animoca Brands, the subsidiary firm that created the popular decentralised gaming virtual environment 'The Sandbox' and celebrities like Snoop Dogg joined the director on stage.

"Data is our most valuable resource. The problem with data today is that we are unable to measure the value of that data that sits inside Facebook and Amazon. We do not know what it's worth to them. The metaverse makes this transparent and open," said Siu, adding, "We are all data generators, so we are all creators. Every conversation adds to the creative process," as per Variety.

"And right now we want to use A.I. programs to create the characters and environments. But the important thing about entertainment is you still have to tell an engaging story, and you still have to build engaging characters.

So that's what I'm interested in," said Kushner, highlighting his goal to not only create immersive experiences in the "real world" but ones that "also translate into the metaverse." "I think that's the future. If we can make and distribute films directly to the people, financed by the people, we can create a whole different creative economy."