8i, FILMRISE AND PASSAGE PICTURES DEBUT HOLOGRAM IN MOBILE AR APP HOLO, TIED TO THE THEATRICAL RELEASE OF “MARJORIE PRIME”- CREATE YOUR OWN VIDEOS & PHOTOS WITH HOLOGRAM.
Jon Hamm’s “Walter Prime” virtual character in the upcoming acclaimed film MARJORIE PRIME has become a reality today.
Volumetric capture startup 8i announced that its Holo mobile augmented reality (AR) app has released a collection of Jon Hamm holograms to celebrate the theatrical release of FilmRise and Passage Pictures’ MARJORIE PRIME. Hamm, who plays a hologram in the film, appears as his “Walter Prime” character in a stunning photorealistic holographic rendering now available for free download in the Holo app, in the App Store for iPhone and on the Google Play store for Android.
8i previously unveiled a Jon Hamm hologram at the 2017 Sundance International Film Festival, making Hamm the first actor at the festival to be turned into a lifelike 3D hologram for virtual and augmented reality. Now, smartphone Android and iOS users around the world can virtually meet “Walter Prime,” as if they were standing in the same room, with the ability to snap a selfie, or record a video with the character as he helps you “remember the moment.” The video and photos of “Walter Prime,” which can also be shared with friends on messaging and social apps, make him appear as if he was there in real life.
The 3D hologram of the Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning actor is available for three months via the Holo app beginning Wednesday, August 16th at noon ET.
The first app of its kind, Holo is a mobile AR app that lets you add holograms of real people or animals into your real world and create videos or photos to share with friends. Created with breakthrough volumetric video technology developed by 8i, Holo features a variety of photorealistic 3D holograms that can be added into your camera view, moved, rotated and resized while recording your video. Holo unveiled a similar collaboration for Spider-Man: Homecoming earlier this year, and the company also features hologram collections of entertainers, athletes, influencers, and original characters, in a range of poses, such as: Buzz Aldrin, Anderson Silva, Debby Ryan, Superfruit, Fall Out Boy and others.
“Working with Jon Hamm was incredibly rewarding for 8i because for the first time we got to watch how our technology brought the performance of a world-class actor alive in volumetric video,” said Steve Raymond, CEO of 8i. “Jon is an incredible talent and seeing him come alive as a hologram was an exciting milestone. With the launch of Holo and the onset of mobile AR, anyone with a smartphone can now bring Jon’s performance into their living room to direct their own videos with the ‘Walter Prime’ character from MARJORIE PRIME. We’re thrilled to partner with FilmRise and Passage Pictures to bring this innovative storytelling capability to Jon’s fans around the world.
“It is amazing to experience the future in the here and now,” said Uri Singer, MARJORIE PRIME producer. “When we first started working on the movie, the script dictated that the holograms would be portrayed as a futuristic reality. Making an actual hologram, not only on film but one that can be experienced around the world right from your smartphone, attests to how present the future has become.”
MARJORIE PRIME follows eighty-six-year-old Marjorie (Lois Smith) who spends her final, ailing days with a computerized version of her deceased husband, Walter (Hamm). With the intent to recount their life together, Marjorie’s “Prime” relies on the information from her and her kin to develop a more complex understanding of his history. As their interactions deepen, the family begins to develop ever diverging recounts of their lives, drawn into the chance to reconstruct the often painful past. Geena Davis and Tim Robbins round out the all-star cast.
Built around exceptional performances from a veteran cast, MARJORIE PRIME shines a light on an often-obscured corner in the world of artificial intelligence and its interactions with mortality. Bringing us robustly into the future, Michael Almereyda’s poetic film forces us to face the question—If we had the opportunity, how would we choose to rebuild the past, and what would we decide to forget?
The critically acclaimed film opens August 18th in select theaters with a national rollout to follow. The distributor and producers are also mounting a fall awards push for Hamm, along with his co-stars.
About 8i:
8i’s mission is to give people the best way to connect with each other and express themselves through holograms. We provide the easiest way to create, use and experience human holograms that look real, and can be viewed from any angle, on any device for virtual, augmented or mixed reality. Our proprietary volumetric video technology transforms regular video from an array of cameras into a photorealistic hologram that can easily be integrated into a variety of immersive experiences and applications. Founded in May 2014, 8i is based in Wellington, New Zealand, and Los Angeles. Learn more at http://8i.com/.
About Passage Pictures:
Founded by veteran film producer Uri Singer, Passage Pictures is a production company based in Los Angeles. Formed in 2016, the company is focused on bringing quality, thought-provoking stories to the big screen. Similar to the mission statement behind Singer’s previous company, BB Pictures, through which Singer produced nine features in six years, Passage Pictures seeks to balance cinematic prestige with commercial viability by acquiring and developing literary works for adaptation alongside fresh, original content.
The company’s debut feature is Marjorie Prime, Singer’s second collaboration with acclaimed director Michael Almereyda following The Experimenter. Additional upcoming projects include I Am Rose Fatou, a comedic take on email phishing schemes, written by Ted Melfi (Hidden Figures). Melfi penned the script while working with Singer on his very first feature, Bed and Breakfast. Singer optioned the rights to Don LeLillo’s career-defining novel “White Noise,” with Almereyda set to pen the screenplay, as well as The King of Oil, the biography of Marc Rich: controversial billionaire, commodities trader, and Glencore founder. The biopic, entitled Rich, is in the final development stages. Singer is also the producer behind Tesla, another collaboration with Almereyda, who is set to direct the movie about the life of the Serbian-born inventor Nicola Tesla. He also recently optioned the rights to Jess Walter’s detective thriller novel “The Zero.”
About FilmRise:
FilmRise is a film and TV distribution company founded by veteran producer/financiers Danny Fisher, Jack Fisher and Alan Klingenstein. With over 15,000 titles in a wide range of genres, the company’s releases include HBO’s multiple Emmy®-winning “Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief”; “Janis: Little Girl Blue,” produced by Oscar®-winner Alex Gibney; two-time Academy Award®-nominee Julie Delpy’s “Lolo”; and the controversial Sundance hit “White Girl.” Television titles include the iconic Robert Stack hosted series “Unsolved Mysteries” and Showtime’s Emmy®-winning “Years of Living Dangerously.”
FilmRise’s recent acquisitions include the acclaimed true crime documentary “I Called Him Morgan”; the multi-Goya award-winning “Truman” starring Ricardo Darin; the box office hit “Harry & Snowman”; “Manifesto” starring two-time Oscar®-winner Cate Blanchett; sci-fi drama “Marjorie Prime” starring Jon Hamm and Tim Robbins; and “My Friend Dahmer” starring Ross Lynch. For more information, go to www.FilmRise.com
To learn more about Holo, visit thisisholo.com.