The Marche du Film, the Cannes Film Festival’s business element, is preparing to expand its virtual reality program.
According to Variety, Cannes XR, the immersive and augmented reality content program, will have new elements this year. Variety reports Cannes XR has partnered with companies Positron and Brogent Technologies to bring in a new virtual reality theater, with dedicated space for competition.
The program will be set up both at the Cannes’ Palais des Festivals convention center, as well as a location at the Palm Beach, a former casino, Variety reports. The venue, according to Variety, has 17,222 square feet of space.
Along with conferences and development showcases, Variety reports there will also be a multi-seat theater with Voyager VR chairs, full-motion platforms from Positron designed to showcase cinematic virtual reality. Positron will also be presenting an honor called the Visionary Award for cinematic VR.
According to Variety, Cannes XR started last year to offer immersive and augmented reality projects more attention. Variety reports Cannes XR is a sort of accelerator and development lab for projects that could impact the industry.
“We want to identify why no XR project has been selected in official competition at a major festival,” said Elie Levasseur, Cannes XR head in the Variety article. “What are the impediments? And once we have those, we can start to offer solutions, to break that glass ceiling. We want to be the place that can incubate or accelerate works that will be selected in major international festivals – the Cannes Film Festival included.”
At the weekend box office, it was “Sonic The Hedgehog” once again earning the top spot with $26.3 million. On its heels, though, was “Call of the Wild” with $24.8 million.
The full top five was:
1. Sonic the Hedgehog – $26,300,000
2. The Call of the Wild – $24,820,000
3. Birds of Prey – $7,005,000
4. The Boy II – $5,900,000
5. Bad Boys For Life – $5,860,000
For the upcoming weekend, the major release is the horror picture “The Invisible Man.”
On the small screen, meanwhile, films available at home are:
- Knives Out, my rating: 4.85 out of 5 (2019 Top 10), Large Association of Movie Blogs rating: 4.41 out of 5, Rotten Tomatoes rating: 97%, MetaCritic rating: 82.
- Frozen II, my rating: 3.75 out of 5, Large Association of Movie Blogs rating: 3.53 out of 5, Rotten Tomatoes rating: 77%, MetaCritic rating: 64.
Matthew Liedke on Film 