Location Based Entertainment (LBE) Virtual Reality Venture
To Launch September 2017
Film producer and former studio head Walter Parkes and global live entertainment producer/entrepreneur Kevin Wall recently announced the completion of a Series A financing of Dreamscape Immersive. Utilizing ground breaking technology developed by Swiss researchers Dr. Caecilia Charbonnier and Sylvain Chagué of the Artanim Foundation, Dreamscape untethers its audience members from the computer, and allows them to 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.
Bold Capital Partners led the Series A with investments from Warner Bros., 21st Century Fox, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), IMAX Corporation, Westfield Corporation, and Steven Spielberg. Dreamscape’s innovative technology, which is an outgrowth of Artanim’s breakthrough work in medical imaging and body mechanics, was debuted earlier this week at the Abundance 360 Conference in Beverly Hills. Peter Diamandis, Co-Founder of Singularity University, described the platform to the audience of CEOs and entrepreneurs as “the future of entertainment.”
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The venture also includes a top-of-field leadership team. Joining Co-Chairmen Parkes and Wall as CEO is Bruce Vaughn, 25-year veteran of Disney Imagineering, who served as its Co-Executive Leader for seven years. As Vaughn notes, “The promise of VR has been greater than the reality…until now. Dreamscape delivers on the promise — to be actively transported into alternate realities where you have experiences and interact with others as naturally as you would in our physical world.”
Vaughn and the upper management will be a stellar advisory group that includes: Yves Behar, renowned industrial designer, as Brand and Design Advisor; Hans Zimmer, Music Advisor; Dan Fellman, Past President, Domestic Distribution, Warner Bros. Pictures, as Distribution Advisor; and Kevin Ratner, President, Forest City Residential West, Real Estate Advisor.
Walter Parkes points out: “The core technologies on which Dreamscape is built are truly game changing — but as with all such innovations, it’s ultimately about content, and the creation of experiences that engage and move people in a way never before imagined. This is why we’ve assembled a team with years of proven success in the creation and distribution of global entertainment; our goal is to move VR into the mainstream.”
Dreamscape Immersive is positioned to provide a strategic opportunity for two sectors of the consumer economy which face similar challenges of drawing customers away from home-based digital alternatives: movies and retail shopping malls.
On the real estate side, Dreamscape’s vision of the VR Multiplex unlocks opportunity within global real estate to reinvigorate the shifting retail landscape by creating unique, irreproducible entertainment experiences that are vivid and compelling enough to bring consumers out of the house and into larger social and retail environments. For motion picture studios and other IP holders, Dreamscape provides another alternative for audiences to enjoy both original experiences and franchised properties.
As Kevin Wall explains: “Today, audiences can see movies in theaters in three formats: 2D, 3D, and IMAX. Dreamscape establishes the Fourth Platform — VR. 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.”
Former President of Control Room and partner in the formation of Dreamscape, Aaron Grosky, will serve as Chief Operating Officer. Joining Vaughn from Imagineering will be his Chief Experience Officer Kevin Rice and Chief Software Designer Chris Purvis. Caecilia Charbonnier, Sylvain Chagué and Ronald Menzel, co-founders of Dreamscape, will serve respectively as co-CTOs and Chief Strategic Officer.
Dreamscape Immersive will launch their flagship VR Multiplex in Fall 2017 as part of the reopening of Westfield’s Century City Mall.
