A Coenesque caper-gone-wrong and an interactive mother-daughter saga told in bite-size form, XR titles “Kidnapped in Vostok” (pictured) and “Rock, Paper, Scissors” are among the 17 projects leading distributor Astrea picked up in a recent bout of acquisitions.
Both titles are playing in competition at this year’s NewImages Festival, while other recent Astrea pickups include the Stanislaw Lem inspired short “Cosmogonic,” the award winning interactive film “Glimpse” from Oscar winner Benjamin Cleary and VR designer Michael O’Connor, and all five episodes of the “Missing Pictures” series, in which filmmakers Abel Ferrara, Tsai Ming-Liang, Catherine Hardwicke, Lee Myung-Se and Naomi Kawase reflect on the dream projects they could never get made.
Rounding out the list of recent pickups are “Child of Empire,” “Evolver,” “Gondwana,” “The Mutek Collection,” “Norn Vol. 1: The Nine Daughters of Ran” and “On the Morning You Wake.”
The recent round of acquisitions caps a period of breakneck growth for the young distributor. Launched in 2021 as the publishing and international sales branch of Atlas V, Astrea now floats in complementary orbit, handling international deals for a wide variety of interactive narrative projects from as many global production houses.
Boasting a catalog more than 70 titles strong, Astrea joins a rather small coterie of only two other Parisian outfits – the CLPB subsidiary Lucid Realties, which focuses on exhibition in museum spaces, and the premium 360 specialists Diversion cinema – as one of three young companies forging new paths and creating new opportunities in the nascent field of immersive distribution.
“Astrea is working to bridge the gap between amazing stories in VR and audiences,” says Astrea head of distribution Danielle Giroux. “Our mission is to open a portal to immersive worlds for story seekers. We are publishing and linking together independent VR stories as well as more well-known IP, with goals to harness interest and have a wider reach, like anime fans or narrative video game enthusiasts.”
“When it comes to new metaverse ready worlds, we need to make them more fun to access, while never compromising on revenue coming back to the artists,” she continues. “Technology adoption rates and new marketing approaches are some of the many challenges we tackle, but with our network, amazing team, and the line up of works we represent, we are breaking those barriers day by day.”