A Minecraft Movie ‘Holograms' Take Over US Malls
In a world where high-budget blockbuster movies are struggling at the box office A Minecraft Movie has come out of the blocks flying, taking $163m in the US and Canada in its opening weekend and $151 million in the rest of the world.
The movie seems to have connected with its intended young gaming demographic, and many of them will be delighted to experience the cutting-edge interactive 'holographic' experiences that have popped up across the USA this week across 30 Simon and four Macerich malls.
A partnership between Warner Bros. Pictures and the Hologram Media Network (HMN) is encouraging Minecraft fans to stand in front of person-sized frames from Proto Hologram that turns them into characters from the movie. While dubbed 'holograms', they are, in truth, digital avatars, rendered into 3D by Los Angeles-based creative studio Pretty Big Monster. Adding to the realism, the 3D creation inside the box reflects light onto the physical bezel of the Proto frame, creating a shadow effect that grounds it in the world.
Thanks to integrated 3D body-tracking cameras these full-size 3D avatars mimic the actions of the person standing in front of the frame, creating an engagingly interactive experience that bests static posters or passive video content. As can be seen the video, kids, and even adults, are drawn to the interactive advertising.
A fascinating example of how the physical and digital worlds are merging, Proto Hologram tech is essentially a new form of video interaction that delivers an increased sense of 'presence'. As well as the entertainment industry the tech has been widely adopted by several Fortune 500 companies and for enhancing medical telepresence, enabling experts to provide remote healthcare.
FEATURED | Frase ByForbes™
Unscramble The Anagram To Reveal The Phrase
Pinpoint By Linkedin
Guess The Category
Queens By Linkedin
Crown Each Region
Crossclimb By Linkedin
Unlock A Trivia Ladder
In these cases, instead of 3D avatars, a high-resolution video of a person in front of a screen is streamed to the frame, making it look as if they are standing inside it. Thanks to a camera and built-in speakers they can interact with those watching the frame projection, wherever in the world they are.
Proto tech can be found is in over 50 universities worldwide and dozens of major sports arenas — and now movie advertising.
While a first for Warner Bros. Picture, similar Holographic Media Network experiences have been used to support two previous movies: for Paramount Pictures' Sonic the Hedgehog 3 in December 2024 and Sony Pictures' Paddington in Peru in February 2025.
"With A Minecraft Movie, we launched a nationally scalable, in-person 3D experience—no headsets, no glasses required,' said Andrew Felts, the CEO of Hologram Media Network. 'In a single day at Roosevelt Field Mall, over 750 people stepped into the activation, transforming into holograms of in-game creatures. That's one fully immersive experience every 45 seconds, sustained for 10 straight hours—watched live by more than 30,000 on-site viewers.'
In addition, Snapchat has also partnered with Warner Bros. and HMN to launch a collection of four AR Lens experiences (overlaying 3D effects and objects into the world), dubbed Blockify Your World, that also including the 3D body tracking lens. This debuted in a one-day event at Roosevelt Field Mall in New York and showcased four different AR Lenses inspired by the world of A Minecraft Movie.
'Combining hologram technology with Snapchat augmented reality unlocks an exciting new world of storytelling capabilities,' said Adam Katzenback, head of entertainment creative strategy at Snap Inc. 'Together, Snap, HMN, and Warner Brothers are inviting fans to literally step into the world of Minecraft in a way that's creative and playful, just like Snapchat.'
HMN expects to have 100 more Proto Hologram units installed in the U.S. by the end of 2025 and has plans to launch in Japan.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
USA Today
4 minutes ago
- USA Today
New app-powered sprinkler offers easy, water-conscious lawn care
In a season where rising temperatures and tighter water restrictions are top of mind, Aiper, a company best known for its cordless robotic pool cleaners, is turning its focus to the lawn. The Atlanta-based smart yard brand recently launched its latest product, the IrriSense Smart Irrigation System (Priced at $699.99). The connected, app-driven sprinkler promises healthier grass with less water and hassle. IrriSense takes the guesswork out of lawn care with automated scheduling, responsive watering features and app-based controls, helping homeowners care for their lawns with less effort. The product has earned recognition as a 2025 CES Innovation Award and iF Design Award honoree. Aiper's product lineup has received industry praise, including the Red Dot Design Award. The company has also been recognized as a CES Innovation Awards honoree in 2023, 2024 and 2025, which reflects its ongoing work in connected outdoor solutions. 'At Aiper, we're driven by one simple goal: to use technology to make outdoor living easier and more enjoyable for homeowners,' Aiper CEO Richard Wang said. 'With IrriSense, we're tackling one of the most frustrating parts of lawn care — knowing when, where and how much to water the grass. Just like we reimagined pool cleaning, we've reimagined irrigation to take the guesswork and grunt work out of maintaining a lush, healthy lawn. It's smarter, simpler and built for real life.' Precision watering with minimal setup Designed to eliminate the need for underground piping or complicated installations, IrriSense can be set up in about 15 minutes and controlled entirely through the Aiper app. With sufficient water pressure, the system can reach up to a 39-foot spray radius and cover up to 4,800 square feet — nearly the size of two standard tennis courts — using a single sprinkler. With Aiper's exclusive EvenRain™ technology, simulating natural rainfall for even coverage while preventing overwatering. Gentle water streams protect soil and newly planted seeds. Adaptive Re-Spray technology ensures no blind spots by automatically shortening spray distances after completing the outermost zone. A built-in filter helps keep the system free of clogs, while a backflow valve adds a layer of protection for the home's water supply. These are small but essential features that help ensure long-term reliability. A smarter way to stay connected According to the EPA, inefficient watering methods like evaporation, wind or overwatering waste up to 50% of outdoor water use. By automating timing and targeting, smart irrigation systems like IrriSense help reduce wasted water by delivering it only when it is needed. With the Aiper app, users can manage their watering routines from anywhere. The app lets homeowners map out irrigation zones, adjust schedules on the fly and view live updates — including water usage and timing. It also pulls local weather data to cancel watering on rainy days to combat overwatering. Features like one-touch activation, performance history and irrigation zone mapping give homeowners more control without adding complexity. Designed with the world in mind Aiper is partnering with - bringing safe water to 4,000 people in need. Their donation supports access to clean water, improving health, education and opportunity for communities in need. From cordless robotic pool cleaners that reduce the need for frequent backwashing and water replacement by keeping pools cleaner for longer, to the new IrriSense smart irrigation system that uses real-time weather monitoring to water lawns only when it's needed – Aiper's innovations are designed to help people use water more sustainably. Visit to learn more about its products or to purchase IrriSense, now available at just $499.99 with a limited time offer. Members of the editorial and news staff of USA TODAY Network were not involved in the creation of this content.
Business Wire
4 minutes ago
- Business Wire
Riata Capital Announces Recapitalization of COEO Solutions, a Leading Provider of Networking, Voice and Communications Solutions
DALLAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Riata Capital Group ('Riata' or 'RCG'), a Dallas-based private equity investment firm, today announced it has led the recapitalization of COEO Solutions ('COEO' or the 'Company') in partnership with Founder and CEO Eric Wince, President Frank Ruffolo, and the Company's management team. Headquartered in Downers Grove, IL, COEO is a leading provider of state-of-the-art managed network and cloud collaboration solutions to small and mid-sized enterprises. Riata's investment will support COEO's accelerated expansion and strategic growth plans. COEO provides a suite of next-generation managed network and IT solutions to multi-location customers serving thousands of locations across a variety of sectors including healthcare, finance, manufacturing, business services, education, and government. The Company assists 'Forgotten 5,000' small to mid-sized enterprises who are underserved by major carriers and need a responsive communications and solutions partner that can provide 100% network uptime and best-in-class onshore support. COEO partners with customers to design and support their unique IT and communications infrastructure needs through a platform of managed network- and cloud communications-centric services, including DIA, SD-WAN, SASE, managed voice, SIP trunking, UCaaS, and other collaboration solutions. With white-glove service, and an industry leading NPS, COEO manages these critical services for its customers, allowing customer IT teams to remain focused on core competencies and day-to-day operations. Blake Battaglia, Managing Partner of RCG, said, 'Eric, Frank, and their team have built an impressive platform. Leading with best-in-class engineering expertise and the latest technology, the Company has served strong demand for outsourced IT and managed services among mid-market customers. COEO is an example of a true partner for their customers, designing custom network and cloud communications solutions that maximize security and scalability while minimizing disruptions and price. We look forward to partnering with them in this next chapter of growth.' RCG Managing Partner Jeff Fronterhouse, added, 'We believe Eric, Frank, and the COEO team are at an inflection point in their business. We are excited to invest in the team, the technology, and the growth strategy and expect to deploy additional capital to support the Company's continued organic expansion as well as strategic add-on acquisitions.' COEO's CEO Eric Wince said, 'The entire COEO team is excited to welcome Riata as our investment partner. We have been impressed throughout the process with their knowledge, thoughtfulness, and vision for our business and believe they are a great fit culturally and strategically. Our customers, technology partners, and employees continue to have our unwavering dedication as we provide an unparalleled service experience. Our partnership with Riata represents a strategic step forward, providing significant expertise and resources to accelerate our growth. Their support enables us to scale effectively while remaining true to our core mission and long-term vision.' Q Advisors, a global TMT investment banking boutique, acted as exclusive financial advisor to COEO Solutions in connection with this transaction. About Riata RCG is a leading Dallas-based private equity investment firm that partners with seasoned management teams to invest in growing, profitable, privately held companies with a focus on three industry sectors: business services, consumer, and healthcare services. Riata takes a selective approach to investing in high-potential businesses whose owners and management teams want an investment partner with the capital, experience, and record of successful collaboration required to achieve their liquidity and value-creation objectives. Over the course of their careers, the principals of RCG have deployed over $2 billion of capital into more than 45 platforms and 350 add-on acquisitions totaling over $7 billion in transaction value. With significant investment experience, a balanced team with financial and operating expertise, a strong team of seasoned operating partners, and significant experience in the firm's targeted sectors, Riata provides a compelling value proposition to business owners and entrepreneurs. Additional information is available on the firm's website: About COEO COEO is a leading provider of managed network and cloud communications solutions intended to allow businesses to connect and communicate easily and securely with each other. The Company serves small to mid-size, multi-location enterprises in industries including healthcare, finance, manufacturing, business services, education, and government. Established in 2014 and headquartered in Downers Grove, IL, the Company provides white glove service to customers nationwide. For more information, visit
WIRED
5 minutes ago
- WIRED
I Went to an AI Film Festival Screening and Left With More Questions Than Answers
Aug 20, 2025 6:30 AM Runway AI paired up with Imax to screen 10 AI-generated winning selections. The festival has been derided by some cinephiles, while others insist it's part of a natural technological evolution. The AI Film Festival. Photograph: Mark Sommerfeld Last year, filmmaker Paul Schrader—the director of Blue Collar, American Gigolo , and First Reformed , and writer of Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver —issued what seemed like the last word on artificial intelligence in Hollywood filmmaking. A few days after the release of Denis Villeneuve's sci-fi blockbuster Dune: Part Two , Schrader asked his Facebook followers: 'Will Dune 3 be made by AI? And, if it is, how will we know?' Schrader is well regarded not only as a director, but one of cinema's top-shelf curmudgeons, quick with a wry burn or baiting shit-post. But his Dune tweet seemed like more than another provocation. It spoke to a mounting feeling among many filmgoers, myself included: that Hollywood had stooped to producing sleek, antiseptic images so devoid of personality that they might as well have been made not by a living, breathing, thinking, feeling artist, but by a computer. Most generative AIs 'train' on existing troves of man-made images. With Dune , the opposite seemed true. It appeared as if Villeneuve was training on AI conjurations, screensavers, and glossy desktop wallpapers. (In fact, the film used 'machine learning' models to relatively modest ends.) Still, it got me thinking: Is there an actual AI aesthetic? Do video generators powered by AI share a set of artistic ideas, or values, common among their output? Or, even more basically, can AI video generators have ideas, or values, at all? My initial hunches here were … a) no; b) no; and c); no, of course an AI could not have 'ideas' or 'values,' which are the exclusive province of human artists, and human beings more generally. A toaster does not get a notion to warm up your bread or bagel, and then follow through with it. Nor does it care about how it does so. It merely executes a set of routinized, mechanized functions related to the warming (and eventual jettisoning) of breads, bagels, and other toastables. Why should generative AI be any different? To test these premises (and my own rather dismissive conclusions) I trekked to a theater in New York to take in a program of 10 short films from the 2025 AI Film Festival. The AI Film Festival is backed by Runway, a New York–based AI company offering 'tools for human imagination.' Among those tools are image and video generators allowing users to create characters, sets, lighting schemes, and whole immersive scenes. With its Gen-4 software, users can theoretically create a whole movie—or something vaguely approximating one, anyway. 'We were all frustrated filmmakers,' says Runway's cofounder, Alejandro Matamala Ortiz, of he and his partners, who met as grad students enrolled in the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at NYU's Tisch School for the Arts. 'We wanted to build the tools that we wanted to use.' The film festival was born of a further desire to help legitimize those same AI tools. A gala screening held earlier this summer at New York's prestigious Alice Tully Hall at the Lincoln Center (home to the New York Film Festival and year-round programming) saw filmmakers and technologists gather to watch the crème de la crème of a technology typically written off for producing mere 'slop.' The festival format, Ortiz says, serves to 'bring people together.' Now, that same gala program is touring Imax cinemas around the country, for a limited engagement. As with any billing of 10 shorts made by 10 different filmmakers, the quality is a bit scattershot. The program begins promisingly enough with Maddie Hong's Emergence, an immersive nature documentary 'shot' (and narrated) from the POV of a butterfly larvae hatching from a chrysalis. With its bold pastel color palette, the rotoscope animated More Tears Than Harm , by Herinarivo Rakotomanana, superficially evoked the work of American primitivist painter Horace Pippin (who is one of my favorite artists). Simon Reith's 6000 Lies is a rapid collage of gestating human fetuses, followed by a photo of a fetus burial site. In an abridged form, it might make an effective advertisement for a pro-life group. Indeed, if there was anything like an aesthetic sensibility shared by the films it was a sense of commercialized gloss: rapid-fire edits, satiny, photorealistic images. A few, like Riccardo Fusetti's Editorial and Vallée Duhamel's Fragments of Nowhere , played like perfume ads for a fragrance an android might wear. The lousiest of the bunch was an anime short called RŌHKI - A Million Trillion Pathways , credited to a filmmaker named Hachi and IO. Beyond being wholly derivative, it highlighted the rather obvious shortcomings of the technology, like characters' earlobes and shirt collars seemingly mutating in shape between scenes. One filmmaker in the audience, Robert Pietri, came away mostly impressed by what he saw. 'A couple of them were really pushing, and going where I think you should be going with this,' he says, 'which is creating a cinema that you can't create otherwise. I was excited by it.' He sees the weaker films as not being limited as much by the emerging AI toolkit but by the 'limitations of the creators.' An AI it seems, cannot render away bad ideas inputted by the human beings plugging in the prompts. Well, not yet, anyway. As something of a generative-AI skeptic, watching the program raised all kinds of questions. Some of these were pretty pedantic and boring. Like: Does standard movie theater etiquette (re: looking at one's cell phone) apply during an AI film fest? You could imagine a computer filmmaker might actually like to see another little computer, lighting up in the dark theater, as if approvingly. Other questions were a bit more existential—or, perhaps, ontological—relating to the very nature of so-called 'AI art.' Even when these films were entertaining or nice to look at, I couldn't help but feel a little tricked. Aren't those qualities mere impersonations of real films, painstakingly made by real people? And so, aren't even the 'good films' still fundamentally bad? There are other, less chin-stroking, considerations. Generative AI has drawn criticism for its massive draw on natural resources, with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman admitting that the proliferation of data centers is pretty much unsustainable without considerable developments in nuclear fusion. And AI's encroachment on certain creative fields has led to concerns about mass layoffs in the film and video game industries. Runway's Ortiz says he thinks of AI as similar to previous technological innovations rollicking creative fields. 'Technology has brought some disruption in the job market,' he says. 'But it also opens up new, new stuff.' The technologists and 'creatives' using and promoting these tools tend to frame the arrival of all this 'new, new stuff' as something of an inevitability. Phoenix-based filmmaker Jacob Adler, whose Total Pixel Space took top honors at the AI Film Festival, seems to follow a similar philosophical track. 'I am fascinated by the long arc of technological evolution that requires the flow of time, beginning with biological technologies such as self-replicating molecules, cell membranes, photosynthesis, nervous systems, eyes, brains, etc.,' Adler wrote in an email to WIRED. 'AI is not a departure from nature, but a continuation of the fundamental evolutionary trend of biology learning to build more complex information-processing systems, now outside its own flesh.' But flesh still has its defenders. The AI battle lines increasingly seem drawn in terms that are unreconcilable. So it comes as little surprise that skeptics, critics, and champions of the old ways have been decrying the AI Film Festival from day one. When Imax announced its partnership with Runway AI, responses among cinephiles were spiky. One X user replied,'Not watching anything made by clankers,' referencing the slur used to disparage robots in the Star Wars films. Actor Jared Gillman reposted Imax's announcement on X with an image of Ethan Hawke in a suicide vest from First Reformed with the caption, 'One ticket for the ai imax film festival please' (doubly appropriate, perhaps, considering Schrader's stated views on the technology). The commingling of Imax and AI seemed a particularly egregious offence. Imax, after all, is a corporation ostensibly dedicated to showcasing the theatrical cinematic experience at the grandest and most imposing scale. And AI is regarded as, well, something else entirely. As one especially withering Redditor put it, 'Imax and Runway AI Sign a Film Festival Deal to Show Dogshit.' AI's defenders (many of whom have a vested financial interest in the technology's success) love claiming that many great leaps forward in human artistry have been met with similar resistance. And they have a point—to a point. Digital filmmaking challenged analog, celluloid filmmaking. The introduction of sound and color technology in cinema was regarded, at first, as a mere gimmick. Even very early critics and academics fretted that photographic media like cinema could never be art, precisely because they merely represented reality, instead of interpreting it. With time, and plenty of counterargument, pretty much all these takes have been proven wrong. Adler's own prize-winning short (which earned him a $15,000 cash prize and 1 million Runway AI 'credits') is a thesis film on this very idea. Total Pixel Space explores the notion of a hypothetical universe of colored pixels, exploring what its narrator calls 'a process of discovery in which all of reality is already mapped.' OK. But is all of reality 'already mapped'? Is this technology merely being 'discovered,' as one might discover, say, a river or a cool restaurant? Or is it being invented, and managed, by actual people making actual decisions, which have actual consequences? Perhaps AI is just the latest disruptive innovation riling up the haters and fuddy-duddies. Or perhaps machine-generated art constitutes not just another step in cinematic-technologic evolution, but a fundamental break from the basic, taken-for-granted idea of what it is to make art: that it involves skill, tremendous patience, considerable talent and, at very least, a human being positioned as its prime mover. AI is a difference (or 'disruption') not of degree, but kind—not the next step in a process, but a totally different thing. Apples and computer-generated oranges. For Troy Petermann, a 15-year-old attending the New York screening of the Imax AI Film Festival with his family, AI is not a tool. It's a threat. 'AI is definitely an innovation,' says the aspiring filmmaker. 'But innovation is the drug of humanity. We never know how to stop when it goes too far.' Petermann's reflections are refreshing, in large part because generative AI technologies are so typically pushed to people in his exact demographic: wannabe filmmakers with big ideas but little in the way of tools, money, or institutional support. He admits that AI technology may have tremendous upside in terms of its 'analytical' capacities, like processing and synthesizing information. 'When it comes to creative aspects,' he says, 'we should just draw the line.' Increasingly, those lines are getting blurrier. The AI Film Festival earned such pointed cinephile scorn in part because it was easy to single out as a conscious enemy of the seventh art. Runway's Ortiz speculates that, for the festival's next installment, the company may change the branding altogether. 'I don't think it will remain the 'AI Film Festival,'' he says. 'We do think AI is just going to be part of any process. Similar to other companies. Everyone is an AI company, and will be using AI in some way. AI will become just another tool within filmmaking.'
