John Legend is singing a new tune: virtual reality
In the latest push to make virtual reality an entertainment medium, the startup Baobab Studios is expected to announce on Tuesday a new animated VR series, “Rainbow Crow,” which aims to bring an immersive world of talking-animal animation wherever a user happens to be.
The episodic series — based on a piece of Native American folklore about self-acceptance — stars and is executive-produced by Legend. It is written and directed by “Madagascar” co-writer and director Eric Darnell, chief creative officer and co-founder of Baobab with Silicon Valley executive Maureen Fan, who is the company’s CEO.
The first chapter of "Rainbow Crow" will premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival this month, while a consumer rollout of both it and a second episode will follow later this year. The pieces will be available on a variety of so-called tethered headsets like the HTC Vive as well as mobile-based systems such as Samsung’s Gear VR.
Baobab executives said they didn’t know yet how many episodes would be created. (The finished product, when combined, will run about as long as a featurette.) There is no plan at the moment to charge for “Rainbow Crow”; the idea is to hook consumers so they will be willing to pay later.
“We don’t believe the market is big enough to monetize,” said Fan, who was in Los Angeles last week from Baobab’s Silicon Valley headquarters in Redwood City. “We want to build a pipeline for content that will make eventually make that possible.”
See the full story here: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-john-legend-vr-project-20170411-story.html