A new entry in Google’s now Academy Award-nominated Spotlight Stories series of 360-degree films will boast some serious directing talent behind it.
We somehow missed this when it was announced last month but Jorge Gutierrez, the director of animated hit, The Book of Life, will be heading up a forthcoming entry in the series. The piece will be named Son of Jaguar and, as the logo above implies, it will follow a lucha libre Mexican wrestler. Production studio Reel FX, which also worked on The Book of Life, is teaming its VR division with Gutierrez to create the piece, which it claims will build on the themes of both that film and his animated series, El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rodriguez.
Reel FX was also behind the Power Rangers VR experience that debuted at CES earlier this month, and a Hunger Games experience among other 360-degree movies.
Yesterday, we reported that one of Spotlight Stories’ best pieces, the tear jerking Pearl, has been nominated in the Animated Short Film category at the 2017 Oscars, set to take place next month. It is technically VR’s first Academy Award nod, though Pearl was also adapted to fit 2D screens, which is what got it the nomination.
Since its release we’ve seen a number of other VR films from the group, all of which are posted on YouTube. Narratively, they’re all entirely disconnected, but each has a charming, family-friendly tone similar to the shorts you might see in front of a Disney movie at the theater. In fact, Pearl director Patrick Osborne actually did direct one of those shorts, Feast, which ran in front of Big Hero 6 in 2014.
There’s no date for Son of Jaguar just yet but we’ll be sure to be on the lookout for it.
