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The success of Christopher Nolan’s epic The Odyssey brought new awareness to the different Imax experiences out there. Consumers flocked to cinemas equipped with Imax’s rickety old 50 mm film projectors, while those that were unable to snag those coveted tickets sought out Imax theaters that were digital but could show the film in its full-scale, immersive glory.
Meta is betting that it can bring a little bit of that magic to the home. Or the office, or the coffee shop, or even a cross-country flight.
At the tech giant’s Menlo Park headquarters this week, CEO Mark Zuckerberg told the crowd of partners, developers, creators and journalists that over the last few years “we made the decision to focus a little bit less on metaverse for now, build fewer VR devices, and only release them when we have real breakthroughs.”
“This is a breakthrough,” he added, grabbing a pair of what the company calls Meta VR Glasses, describing it as being a “cinema” a “computer” and a “console” all in one.
And it will be, Zuckerberg said on stage, the first Imax Enhanced certified VR device. In other words, if you missed The Odyssey or Avatar in theaters, you’ll be able to see it in its true aspect ratio at home, just as the director intended.
“We don’t want to disrupt anything about the current theatrical experience or the cinema experience,” says Sarah Malkin, the head of entertainment for Meta’s Reality Labs. “We are all huge entertainment lovers, we love to take our friends and family to the movies, and want the box office to thrive. For us, our intent — and this is something we’re doing with James Cameron’s Billie Eilish film — now that there’s no longer any place to see it [in theaters], we will be the place to watch it. That’s the intent for these formats: It’s not to get in the way of the theatrical release, but to be the place afterwards, so people aren’t watching things on a crappy little phone or on the back of an airplane.”
The emphasis on cinema may excite Hollywood. It certainly did for director James Cameron, who was front and center at the keynote. Malkin says that her team has worked with him on 3D entertainment, something that the VR device is optimized for (Cameron recently acquired a company that intends to adapt studio library content to 3D). The film he directed with Eilish, Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour, will be exclusively available to rent or buy on the Meta devices.
“Our ambition is to really create a display and a home for cinema the way it’s meant to be felt, and that does mean different things to different filmmakers,” she says. “So for James Cameron, 3D is his mission and belief around the value of that content and that experience for a viewer. What it does for you when it creates stakes and tension and grandeur and emotion. For Christopher Nolan, it’s the enhanced Imax ratio, and it’s that grandeur and scale that creates what he feels is the way that an audience is best able to feel those films.”
It has Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos support too.
Meta has been in the VR space for years with its Meta Quest headsets. But those devices remain bulky and cumbersome, and require controllers to use. The Meta VR Glasses are five times lighter than the Meta Quest 3, with much of the weight in a puck that clips to your pocket or bag. And there’s no controllers required, only your hands (though Malkin notes that gamers can use controllers, if they want to).
“There’s a particular community who are passionate about what we’ve done and connected to it, but I think the realization we had as a company — and certainly I on the entertainment side — felt that when you have something that feels bulky and heavy, and there’s controllers, it can feel not so accessible, intimidating, perhaps uncomfortable, and it isn’t going to be the way in which I’m going to want to watch a movie or a sports game necessarily,” Malkin says.
The company is already on board with Disney, which provides 3D films via Disney+, and which will stream more than 100 live sports events in the first year in an immersive way including many from ESPN. Services like YouTube, Peacock, Paramount+, HBO Max will also be available, as will original programming, starting with Open Season starring the NBA’s Draymond Green.
The suite of Meta Quest VR games will also be available, including a new version of Beat Saber, optimized for the glasses, as well as Muse, Meta’s AI agent product.
After the VR wars had seemed to fizzle out, Meta is ramping it back up again, betting that consumers will once again give the headset a try to get a taste of that immersive worldbuilding.
English (US) ·