From The Bourne Identity to Edge of Tomorrow, director Doug Liman’s films often push against the limits of technology and storytelling. In the Immersive section of this year’s Venice Film Festival, Liman unveiled Asteroid, a twelve-minute sci-fi thriller built for Android XR, Google’s new mixed reality platform, and Samsung’s “Project Moohan” mixed reality headset, which reportedly will be unveiled this fall, surely with a more commercial name.
Asteroid was produced with Liman’s longtime collaborators, Julina Tatlock and Jed Weintrob, at 30 Ninjas using Google’s proprietary human-scanning technology and Unreal Engine, delivering an intimate, often terrifying, sci-fi thriller with the highest Hollywood production values.
Asteroid is a great idea for a big Hollywood movie. A planetary visitor to our solar system, an asteroid made entirely of diamonds and gold, is passing just 200,000 miles away from Earth. Naturally, entrepreneurs on earth want to go after it. Like the classic John Huston film, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, once the unlikely astronauts do reach the asteroid, greed takes over, with inevitable results. The two survivors’ accounts don’t match up, suggesting a longer version would unfold like Kurosawa’s Roshomon, from multiple, conflicting points of view.
“It’s a capsule designed for three, and I wanted this to be about people who have no business going into space,” said Liman in our interview. “They’re not going up with lofty ambitions; they’re going up to make money. Five of them are crammed into a teeny little Soyuz capsule that is more like an overcrowded fishing boat than a heroic mission.”
Hailee Steinfeld leads the ensemble cast as Anna, whose motives become more inscrutable as the story unfolds. Freida Pinto, Rhenzy Feliz, Leon Mandel, and NFL star DK Metcalf, who plays a version of himself. Veteran actor Ron Perlman, known for his gravelly authority in films like Hellboy and Pacific Rim, rounds out the ensemble as the quirky billionaire who’s bankrolling the expedition.
Tatlock explained that 30 Ninjas adapted Asteroid from Liman’s feature screenplay and reworked it to make it native to Android XR so they could take advantage of everything the new immersive technology has to offer storytellers. “We started the company to develop stories with Doug outside the studio system and challenge expectations of what stories are,” she said. “Being at the intersection of new technology and storytelling makes for more exciting growth in narrative.”
Weintraub added that the project benefited from nearly a decade of experimenting with immersive formats, starting with Invisible (2016), one of the first long-form VR series. For Asteroid, Google provided access to its high-end scanning facility to capture the actors in extreme detail. Those assets were then animated inside Unreal to create the claustrophobic environment.
While the short film stands on its own, 30 Ninjas built an AI-driven extension that continues the narrative. Using Gemini, Google’s large language model, viewers can interact with a simulated version of Metcalf’s character after the credits roll. “You’re not speaking to the assistant,” said Weintraub. “You’re speaking to a fictional version of DK Metcalf, played by DK Metcalf.” The AI layer allows audiences to interrogate the story at their own pace, extending the runtime far beyond the initial twelve minutes. Liman called it a “living, breathing component” that will continue to evolve with audience feedback.
Max Spear, Google’s XR Product Manager, said Asteroid is a showcase title for the first Android XR headset from its partner Samsung, which is unveiling it on September 29. Spear described Asteroid as a key part of the launch slate, helping Android XR arrive with cinematic storytelling alongside productivity tools. “What we’ve really discovered at the intersection of storytelling and technology is that these new headsets, with super high-resolution displays, fast processors, smart hand tracking, and generative AI, finally make it possible to tell a realistic immersive story without the headaches of earlier VR.” He said.
“Even in IMAX, can a movie give you the same immersive experience?” Liman asked rhetorically. “Asteroid puts you inside a Hollywood movie in a way we haven’t seen before.”
Header image credit: NASA Hubble Space Telescope on Unsplash
Charlie Fink is the author of the AR-enabled books “Metaverse,” (2017) and “Convergence” (2019). In the early 90s, Fink was EVP & COO of VR pioneer Virtual World Entertainment. He teaches at Chapman University in Orange, CA.
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