Hier der Kontext zu Richards Gratulationstweet:
Zitat:
Richard Armitage@RCArmitage
.@PenroseVR Congratulations Eugene and your brilliant creative team at Penrose Studios.
https://twitter.com/RCArmitage/status/1017344894015344640Zitat:
Eugene YK Chung@eyc
Antwort an @RCArmitage @PenroseVR
Thank you @RCArmitage. A wonderful pleasure working with you, and look forward to your further bold strides in this new art form.
https://twitter.com/eyc/status/1017372075625857024Zitat:
Critically Acclaimed VR Studio Penrose Secures 10M Series A
Charlie Fink
Jul 11, 2018, 07:07am 1,039 views #VentureCash
Penrose Studios, the narrative VR content shop responsible for the critically acclaimed Allumette (free on Steam) and Arden’s Wake (featuring academy award winning actress Alicia Vikander) announced today it has closed a 10M series A round round of financing, led by TransLink Capital.
In addition to TransLink, this round includes new investors such as SalesForce founder and CEO Marc Benioff, Grammy-award winning artist will.i.am, Korea Telecom, Co-Made, and returning investors Sway Ventures, 8VC, and Suffolk Equity.
Penrose Studios launched a new VR series last year, Arden’s Wake, which has two installments, The Prologue and Tide's Fall. Arden’s Wake: The Prologue premiered at Tribeca Film Festival in 2017 and received the top Lion award from Venice Film Festival for Best VR. The second piece in the series, Arden’s Wake: Tide’s Fall, premiered at Tribeca earlier this year, and features Academy Award-winning actress Alicia Vikander (Best Supporting Actress, The Danish Girl 2016) and actor Richard Armitage (The Hobbit, Captain America: The First Avenger). Vikander gave Arden's Wake heroine Meena her voice. Arden's Wake tells the story of Meena, and her search for her troubled father, who disappeared during a deep-sea dive to retrieve artifacts from the ruins of formerly great skyscrapers on the ocean floor.
“In what is still an early form of storytelling and entertainment, the Penrose team has cracked the formula to create VR stories and experiences everyone can enjoy,” said Jay Eum, co-founder and managing director of TransLink Capital. “The company's unique technology paired with the beauty of its work speak for themselves. We're proud to work with the team and Penrose leadership to bring more VR entertainment to audiences around the world, especially in Asia.” According to its website, Translink Capital, based in San Jose, “has long-standing relationships with over 20 of the most significant Asian technology, Internet, electronic manufacturing services, and telecommunications services corporations in Greater China, Japan, and South Korea. These companies have invested in the TransLink Capital funds and have co-invested with us in our portfolio companies.” Korea Telecom is also an investor, and particularly interested in 5G, Penrose Founder, CEO and content visionary (producer, writer, director), Eugene Chung, told me in a wide-ranging interview on Tuesday afternoon.
“VR continues to be a breakthrough form of entertainment for all ages,” said Eugene Chung, Penrose Studios founder, and CEO. “As we participate in taking this new form of storytelling to the next level, we’re proud to have a great group of investors and artists with a shared vision of the future of this medium.” Chung, who was previously Head of Film & Media at Oculus, founded Penrose Studios in 2015.
I have written about Chung and Penrose in this column several times before, most recently after seeing Arden’s Wake: Tide’s Fall, at Tribeca. I called it one of the five most awesome experiences in the festival. Critics agreed. I raved about Penrose’s previous narrative VR experience, Allumette, which Wired called “the first VR masterpiece.” After seeing the first installment of Arden’s Wake at Tribeca last year, I said it was "the kind of entertainment that will make people want to buy a VR system.” In a piece in Forbes last summer, I described Chung as “the D.W. Griffith of virtual reality.” The artistic quality of the work sets a high bar for other storytellers working in this new medium.
The team of 20 at Penrose have produced over an hour of VR content on a platform of their own making, the award-winning VR development tool they named Maestro, which won an award itself at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival. By contrast, it takes several hundred people at Disney more than two years to produce an animated movie.
Like the early film pioneers, to whom he has often been compared, Chung wears three or four hats. “I’m 24/7,” he explained, adding, “My vacations are short business trips to amazing places.” When he’s not working, Chung is a voracious consumer of VR and pop culture. Chung credits his ability to manage both the business and creative work of the company to the leadership of his co-founder, Chief Scientist Jimmy Maidens, and Animation Supervisor Bruna Berford, who, like Chung, is an Oculus alumni. Among other things, the new financing will allow Chung and his team to grow Penrose’s staff “sustainably with the market”. He says they will be very discerning when adding to the team. “We want only the best, most dedicated artists who live and breathe VR every day and have a passion for great stories.”
With Arden’s Wake behind them, the company is settling into a new project about which Chung is characteristically mum. What he would say was that the company’s new projects “would be increasingly interactive and social, while emphasizing the company’s commitment to stories with emotional impact.” While Chung said he wasn’t done with the cloud kingdom of Allumette and the postapocalyptic water world of Arden’s Wake, for the next project will create yet another, completely new world.
With the market for VR content in a nascent state, and maturing more slowly than predicted, producers have had a notoriously difficult time securing financing, yet Chung says Penrose's Series A was oversubscribed. They even opened it up so that celebrity investors could participate in the round.
Chung and the investors have faith that as the market matures premium content will command extraordinary value, as it does in other media. Allumette is free for all VR platforms on Steam, Viveport and in the Oculus Store. Chung and his investors are not measuring the product’s success by revenue, but rather by the number of downloads and the audience reaction to the fifteen-minute experience. “When our investors looked at the global performance of Allumette, they were very excited. It was a big plus in our favor.”
Arden’s Wake is not available to the public, though Chung promised distribution plans would be announced soon. He says the company is working on business model innovations and exploring emerging markets for VR in public places, museums, libraries, and educational institutions. Over a billion smartphones are now AR capable. Niantic’s Pokemon Go, Snapchat Filters and upcoming Google Maps upgrades all offer great consumer AR use cases, but no one has yet offered a narrative entertainment product for mobile AR. Penrose sees this as a huge opportunity.
Chung is likewise bullish on standalone devices like the Oculus Go, and Vive Focus. In the longer term, his investors are confident that the increased bandwidth of 5G mobile networks will spur significant advances in consumer VR. “Our plans for the future include open sandboxes for the worlds we’re creating, where people can enter and explore places like the cloud world together, and really be inside the story with the characters. Like a virtual Disneyland that you can explore again and again,” he said. “It would never be the same twice.
Charlie Fink is a former Disney & AOL exec and Forbes columnist. In the 90s, he ran VR pioneer Virtual World. He's the author of Charlie Fink's Metaverse, An AR Enabled Guide to VR & AR.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/charliefink/2018/07/11/critically-acclaimed-vr-studio-penrose-secures-10m-series-a/#369cab173c69Und hier noch die deutschsprachige Presseerklärung:
Zitat:
Penrose Studios
Penrose Studios erzielt in A-Finanzierungsrunde 10 Millionen USD11.07.2018 – 23:34
San Francisco (ots/PRNewswire) - Start-up für virtuelle und ergänzte Realität aus San Francisco wächst weiterhin mit prominenten Investoren
Penrose Studios, Studio für preisgekrönte Unterhaltung mit virtuelle Realität, hat heute den Abschluss einer A-Finanzierungsrunde unter Leitung von TransLink Capital bekannt gegeben.
Neben TransLink nahmen eine Reihe neuer und erneuter Investoren an der Finanzierungsrunde teil. Zu den neuen Investorenpartnern des Studios gehören der Unternehmer Marc Benioff (Gründer und CEO von SalesForce), will.i.am (mit einem Grammy ausgezeichneter Künstler und VR-Kreativer), sowie Korea Telecom und Co-Made. Zu den erneuten Investoren gehören Sway Ventures, 8VC und Suffolk Equity.
Seit der ersten Finanzierungsrunde im März 2016 haben Penrose Studios die neue Serie Arden's Wake mit den zwei Teilen The Prologue and Tide's Fall aus der Taufe gehoben. Arden's Wake: The Prologue hatte seine Premiere 2017 auf dem Tribeca Film Festival und wurde auf dem Filmfest von Venedig mit einem Löwen für die beste VR ausgezeichnet. Der zweite Teil der Serie, Arden's Wake: Tide's Fall erlebte seine Premiere im April auf dem Tribeca Film Festival.
Die Oscar-Preisträgerin Alicia Vikander und der weltbekannte Schauspieler Richard Armitage gehören zum Ensemble. Nicht nur wird Hollywood die VR näher gebracht, sondern das Team des Studios nimmt zudem aktiv an der Innovation bei Technik und Film und an Veranstaltungen der VR-Branche weltweit teil. Penrose Studios war zudem auf der FMX 2017 in Stuttgart vertreten.
"Das Team von Penrose hat in dieser Form, die bei Storys und Unterhaltung noch in den Kinderschuhen steckt, eine Formel gefunden, VR-Geschichten und Erfahrungen zu schaffen, die jedermann genießen kann", sagte Jay Eum, Gründer und Geschäftsführer von TransLink Capital. "Die einzigartige Technik des Unternehmens und die Eleganz seiner Arbeit sprechen für sich. Wir sind stolz darauf, mit Team und Führung von Penrose daran zu arbeiten, dem Publikum weltweit, speziell in Asien, mehr VR-Unterhaltung anzubieten."
"Die VR ist weiterhin eine bahnbrechende Form der Unterhaltung für alle Altersgruppen", sagte Eugene YK Chung, Gründer und CEO der Penrose Studios. "Wir wirken daran mit, diese Form des Erzählens auf ein neues Niveau zu heben und sind stolz auf die Zusammenarbeit mit exzellenten Partnern und Investoren, die uns dabei helfen, weiterhin unsere Dynamik in der Branche aufrechtzuerhalten."
Kapital der A-Finanzierungsrunde wird die weitere Entwicklung von VR- und AR-Filmen und -Erfahrungen finanzieren und den Penrose Studios die nötigen Mittel zur Verfügung stellen, weiterhin zu wachsen, innovativ zu sein und von der Kritik gelobte Inhalte für die wachsende Zahl der Nutzer von VR-Headsets weltweit bereitzustellen.
Weitere Informationen über Penrose Studios erhalten Sie unter
www.penrosestudios.com oder folgen Sie uns auf Instagram, Facebook und Twitter.
Informationen zu Penrose Studios
Penrose Studios ist eine der führenden Filmproduktionen der Welt unabhängiger Filme mit virtueller und ergänzter Realität. Das Studio produziert preisgekrönte, umfassende, computergenerierte (CG) Welten, die mit vollständiger Bewegungsfreiheit fesselnde Geschichten erzählen. Das Start-up mit Sitz in San Francisco ist für kühne Innovationen im Geschichtenerzählen mit virtueller und ergänzter Realität bekannt, welche die Einbildungskraft freisetzen und Magie erzeugen. Das Ziel des Unternehmens ist, die nächste Generation des Geschichtenerzählens zu definieren und mittels seiner Arbeit die Grenzen der Unterhaltung hinauszuschieben. Dies geschieht durch umfassende Erfahrungen, die sich universellen Themen wie Familie, Liebe, Verlust, Furcht und Opfer widmen. Penrose Studios wurde 2015 von Eugene YK Chung gegründet, zuvor Leiter des Bereichs Film & Media bei Oculus VR, das später von Facebook für 2,3 Milliarden USD erworben wurde. In Leitung und Belegschaft des Unternehmens finden sich Pioniere und erfahrene Fachkräfte aus vielen der größten Filmstudios.
www.penrosestudios.comPressekontakt:
Jessica Douglas,
jessica.douglas@penrosestudios.com https://www.presseportal.de/pm/131363/3995169