‘Ghostbusters’: Cross the Streams at Virtual Reality Experience
As Ghostbusters fans eagerly anticipate director Paul Feig’s female-fronted reboot of the film franchise that stars Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon, it seems it’s time to get those proton packs ready in reality before the movie opens in cinemas on July 15th.
Sony Pictures commissioned the Void to create Ghostbusters: Dimension, a multiplayer virtual reality experience that transports users into the world of the film franchise, armed with proton packs and ghost traps to hunt down a “paranormal villain” that’s hiding in a New York apartment complex.
The experience opens July 1st in Times Square at Madame Tussauds New York, and it’s part of an 85,000 square foot Ghostbusters Experience attraction, which takes up a floor-and-a-half and includes four themed rooms and six wax figures based on characters from the new movie.
“Fans will get to know what it really feels like to be a Ghostbuster,” Ken Bretschneider tells Rolling Stone. The founder and CEO of the Void calls it “hyper-reality,” explaining that it’s “a combination of a physical set, 5D effects and virtual reality.”
According to Jake Zim, senior vice president of digital marketing at Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group, producer Ivan Reitman and Feig worked with the Void to create a narrative that gives people a storyline that fits with the franchise but could also live independently. “All of the new equipment – the proton packs, the proton blasters, the outfits the Ghostbusters wear in the new movie – are incorporated into the Void’s creative to ensure the highest quality images and environments would appear in this virtual reality experience,” Zim says.
Three players can enter the 15-minute experience at a time, and the progressive storyline will vary for users because actions each team makes impacts what they’ll see from start to finish. This means there’s “replay value,” to borrow a popular video game term.
“This is an authentic Ghostbusters world that will appeal to old and new fans alike,” explains Curtis Hickman, chief creative officer at the Void. “The experience ties nicely into the upcoming film, and there might just be a few familiar faces as well.”
Sony Pictures is keeping mum on any specifics regarding celebrity cameos and even the ghosts that will haunt this interactive experience. That’s in part to make the actual attraction a clean slate for anyone who dons the hardware and enters into this new type of “hyper-reality” experience, which includes smells, heat and cold and other real-world effects.
James Jensen, chief visionary officer at the Void, says the gear designed for this experience is a one-to-one match-up with the proton packs from the Ghostbusters films.
“Patrons will literally strap on a backpack that looks like a proton pack,”Jensen explains. “The pack contains a custom Rapture Void computer we like to call a Backtop, which is built from the ground up for untethered hyper-reality.”