Overview

With Wevr’s rich history of delivering complex, narrative stories in immersive environments, Warner Brothers partnered with Wevr to develop a transmedia approach to The Matrix franchise. The objective was to develop movie, television, game, LBE and XR content products cross-platform simultaneously. The project built on Wevr’s long term partnership with Warner Brothers, as well as Epic Games, to innovate on next-generation content creation following the success of the Harry Potter VR experience Wevr had developed for Warner.

The Project

Wevr signed John Gaeta, Academy Award winning VFX Supervisor on the original Matrix movie, as the ECD on the project. Wevr and Gaeta partnered with WarnerBros to develop an original script based on The Matrix canon, which was blessed by the Wachowski siblings. 

The story highlights a prescient issue, taking place at a time when robots and AI have embedded in human society, and humans are faced directly with the issues of AGI and the civil rights issues for both carbon and silicon-based intelligences. 

John Gaeta shares his perspective, “This project (codenamed “Gelato”) was an exceptional example of how a next generation methodology focused on making multi platform media from a common tech and asset foundation. Our goal was to apply a unified development approach toward one of the most compelling science fiction universes of the 21st century. In other words, the future of experiencing the Matrix universe involves millions of fans frictionlessly accessing it across many formats but designed and built by the same core team from the very  start and that is what we were pushing with Gelato and with great success thanks to Wevr’s stewardship.”

Weta Digital in New Zealand was secured to develop the 3D world and cross-platform experience. The experience provided a fully cinematic real-time 3D experience, allowing player agency to move through the world and engage with characters and environments directly, both on screen and in full VR immersion. The project leveraged Weta's cutting edge character performance and visual fx pipeline, fully integrated with the Unreal Engine. 

The Result

Working with a broad range of Matrix creators and business executives, Wevr executive produced the project to develop a transmedia, franchise-centric approach to content creation. This project pushed the boundaries of storytelling, building a virtual backlot of 3D assets based on an Unreal Engine real-time 3D pipeline cross-collateralized across multiple media. The main goal of the project was to innovate a franchise-centric development process, versus separate production silos, which also resulted in cost-savings. In producing this project Wevr was able to establish a vision and a model for more IPs to pursue this transmedia approach. 

Neville Spiteri, Wevr CoFounder/CEO and Executive Producer on the project said, “Wevr has been consistently at the forefront of creative storytelling and immersive media. This was a noteworthy project because of its creative excellence as well as proving a compelling business model. We saw first hand the creative and business benefits of cross-platform world-building and the simultaneous development of film, TV, Games and XR, starting from the IP-center.” 

Contact neville at wevr.com to learn more about how Wevr can augment your IP development.