Q&A with Immersive Entertainment Company MWM’s Gigi Pritzker and Ethan Stearns
Part of the Future of StoryTelling Community Spotlight Series
Named one of Fast Company’s Top Ten Most Innovative Companies in Hollywood, MWM is a diversified media and entertainment company founded by Emmy Award–winning producer Gigi Pritzker that empowers creators to produce bespoke storytelling across film, TV, immersive VR/AR, mobile gaming, digital content, and live theater.
MWM Immersive, a division of MWM, produces and distributes high-quality interactive entertainment with the world’s best storytellers. Led by Executive Producer Ethan Stearns, MWMi uses audience insights and engaging fandoms to connect audiences with innovative interactive storytelling in entirely new ways.
As someone with a rich history in film, what attracts you to new forms of immersive storytelling, and which formats are you most excited about?
Gigi Pritzker (CEO & Cofounder, MWM): The impetus for starting MWM was to answer what I saw as a need for a place where storytellers and creators could come to work in a platform-agnostic environment and collaborate with people who could help bring their story to life. So for me, the excitement has been building this incredible team of people from a variety of backgrounds: film, live theater, VR, gaming, world-building, and more; to create a place out of whole cloth that revolves around the idea of supercharging creativity, where creators can bring an idea, and we partner with them in whatever way is best for that particular story and that particular creator. I love the idea of taking a story from one medium to another and having it live different lives. So too with creators. To see Jon Favreau, who is such an amazing and accomplished talent, learn a new medium like VR and apply it to both the content we are making (Gnomes & Goblins) and also take his craft to the next level by building The Lion King in Unity through his virtual production process, is an amazing thrill. Or take Lynette Wallworth, an Emmy award–winning VR director. MWM executive produced her latest VR offering, Awavena, and have brought in Oscar winner Darla Anderson to work with all of us to turn this into a full-length animated feature film. To me, this is what is most exciting about this moment in media and entertainment.
How is MWM Immersive doing things differently?
Ethan Stearns (EVP of Content, MWM Immersive): At MWM Immersive, we have the freedom to challenge the limits of traditional storytelling using mediums such as VR while working alongside some of the industry’s most talented creators and helping them bring their visions to life. We support artists to tell stories the way they want to tell them, using whatever mediums and technologies are necessary. That’s something you don’t find at many traditional Hollywood studios. Having a division such as ours allows MWM to support creators by providing them with a more experimental canvas to explore storytelling in new ways.
Can you tell us a little bit about some recent or upcoming projects?
Ethan Stearns: Within the MWM Immersive division, we’ve been working on innovative uses of location-based VR. In the fall we opened Chained: A Victorian Nightmare, an immersive theater VR adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol that featured live actors interacting with participants in realtime. Chained opened in Los Angeles, followed by the Future of Storytelling’s sold-out Pop-Up in April, and we’re working on bringing it to a wider audience soon.
Next up for us is War Remains, an immersive experience that takes audiences into the trenches of the First World War, which we’re opening in Austin this month after introducing it at the Tribeca Film Festival. This was a result of a collaboration with podcast legend Dan Carlin, creator of the Hardcore History podcast, Dallas-based Flight School Studio and Skywalker Sound, which designed the audio for this experience. War Remains is a free-roam experience that has a physical set overlaid with a virtual environment, so you can reach out and touch just about everything you see in VR. You witness an active battle scene with Dan Carlin’s iconic voice guiding you the whole way through.
We’re also working with Sony Pictures Virtual Reality and Tequila Works to make Groundhog Day: Like Father Like Son, a VR continuation of the classic film Groundhog Day. You play as Phil Connors Jr., the son of Bill Murray’s character in the movie. The game is coming to PlayStation VR, Oculus Rift, and HTC Vive later this year.
While there are certainly different technological challenges for producing a straight-to-home project versus location-based, what ties it all together is a focus on storytelling, with a commitment to giving people the best interactive experience possible.
How do you and your team go about choosing the right combination of platforms for a particular story?
Ethan Stearns: Telling stories in new mediums like VR can make for complicated projects, and it is critically important to assemble the right team. With a common vision and a shared passion for the story we are working to tell, we can push technical boundaries while creating experiences that are truly meaningful to the audience. With technology changing so frequently, the teams’ shared passion for the story serves as the foundation that we build on to deliver an impactful narrative while experimenting and pioneering new ways to experience story and connection.
Why should creators and brands be thinking about creating media across various platforms?
Ethan Stearns: We don’t believe in a one-size-fits-all approach to storytelling—different stories require different techniques, mediums, and platforms. On War Remains, Dan Carlin wanted to create something that would give people a taste of what it was like to be a soldier in one of the bloodiest battles in history and to tap into a collective memory. By using VR, a physical set, and practical effects, we’ve been able to execute Dan’s vision in a way no one medium alone could accomplish.
It’s becoming easier and easier to take advantage of different technologies and platforms — people 50 years ago could not have imagined the power of the computers we have in our pockets today. With the barriers to using this kind of technology falling away, creators and brands have an opportunity to pick the mediums and platforms that best suit the story they want to tell, as well as the impact they want to have on their audience.
While working with Dan, it was important for us to maintain the connectivity that he creates with his podcast audience, and bring that across in a new medium. This posed a unique challenge but really speaks to the diversity of platforms MWM works in and is a natural extension of the share by design ethos the company works hard to foster. We believe the final outcome is both innovative and purpose-built for VR but also a natural extension of his tradition of rich storytelling.
Something that is always important to us is never using tech in a gimmicky way. Audiences can smell a gimmick a mile away. It’s imperative that technology and platform always be used in service of the story being told.
What are you most excited about for the future of storytelling?
Ethan Stearns: It seems, more and more, that stories are told across mediums.
Audiences have become more sophisticated with their entertainment, consuming stories across different mediums. In turn, creative minds have grown interested in building experiences and telling stories in numerous ways. We no longer rely on single eventized entertainment events. Stories and characters come from different places, and audiences seem to be growing more versatile both in how they engage with their content and how they participate in the communities surrounding that content.
At the same time, the tools we use to create movies, video games, TV shows, or even experimental content like augmented and virtual reality are converging and becoming more accessible. There are fewer barriers today to make a film or build a video game than ever before, and I’m excited about what this means for the creative diversity of our industry.
I love what we are doing here at MWM because it allows us to be uniquely equipped to support this new future of storytelling. We can work with amazing established talent and help them create new stories across any medium, but also empower new minds with original ideas and stories and help amplify their voice while being focused on community. The future will be built on the diversity of ideas and blend the lines of entertainment. I’m excited to be at MWMi, expanding the reach of interactive storytelling.
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