Various industries are regularly embracing VR’s potential to expand their business and film has been heavily active in a variety of ways. In addition to several tie-in VR experiences we’ve seen, the dawn of immersive VR ads are now a thing as well. Today, we’ve learned that Lionsgate is embracing that concept by partnering with Unity to promote a new entry in the Saw horror franchise.
Arriving in theaters on October 27th this year, Jigsaw is the 8th film in the Saw franchise which was born back in 2004. The Jigsaw VR ad experience, releasing before the film, will be in the form of a “Virtual Room” which is a new tool Unity wants to use to showcase VR’s growing potential for advertising. Within the Virtual Room, users will interact with objects, learn about the upcoming film, and then have to figure out how to save themselves in a “truly visceral and entertaining experience” as so put by Lionsgate’s SVP of Digital Marketing David Edwards in the announcement’s press release.
“At Unity, we want to redefine how people consume advertising,” says Agatha Bochenek, Head of Mobile and VR/AR Advertising at Unity Technologies. “To grow this emerging form of advertising entertainment, we are taking the guesswork out of the biggest hurdles in a new medium — production and distribution. Our goal is to enable advertisers to build high-quality, engaging content quickly which will create memorable experiences, and can seamlessly reach users across all VR platforms.”
With the nature of the Saw franchise revolving roughly around “escape room” horror scenarios, this partnership with Lionsgate for Jigsaw is a seemingly perfect launching point for Virtual Room considering there’s plenty of source material to provide unsettling and memorable set pieces and moments for Jigsaw VR.
