I have not seen many AR applications recently which struck me as exciting let alone likely to be financially successful, but a recent deal definitely caught my eye:
Pokémon Go creator Niantic Labs is partnering with Punchdrunk, the UK-based production company behind seminal immersive theater piece Sleep No More. The partnership will see both companies work toward “developing multiple projects that will reinvent storytelling for a 21st century audience and further expand the horizon of interactive entertainment.”
Sleep No More, launched in its current iteration in New York City back in 2011, is a landmark immersive theater production that lets audiences walk through a series of rooms and experience various storylines and other elements of the production at their own pace. Influenced in part by haunted houses and other nonlinear live productions, immersive theater sounds like a prime fit for augmented reality because it could allow for Niantic and companies like Punchdrunk to create fantastical virtual worlds that are then overlaid over real spaces.
I never got a chance to experience Sleep (trailer above) but the many colleagues who did consistently described it as a kind of virtual world layered on top the real one. So creatively, Punchdrunk makes a lot of sense as a partner. Interestingly, it's a partnership that might better financial sense for Niantic too:
With Niantic's Harry Potter Wizards Unite failing to capture anywhere near the massive audience as Pokémon Go, Niantic clearly needs a successful creative partner right about now. And it was: By one reasonable estimate, Sleep No More was grossing nearly $12 million a year just in ticket sales alone -- extremely good for an edgy off Broadway show. Not an apples to apples comparison, to be sure, but revenue is revenue. And I have to imagine Punchdrunk would want to create similar performances as Sleep, merging real actors, scenes, and performances with Niantic's AR platform.
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