Lucasfilm alums join Jaunt as it launches VR movie studio in LA
VR company Jaunt is starting a virtual reality movie studio — As virtual reality steadily moves closer to mainstream reality, one of the biggest outstanding questions is content: how popular can VR devices get if there's nothing …
Context & Ripple Effects
Jaunt is answering the same content-scarcity problem Oculus attacked months earlier with Story Studio and its debut film "Lost" — but from the production side rather than the headset side. Hiring Lucasfilm alumni into a Los Angeles studio gives it exactly the cinematic craft VR films were assumed to need.
The timing matters because Jaunt was already building the capture layer: within months it would unveil the 360-degree Neo camera for high-end VR production, then raise a $65M round led by Disney that made it the best-funded VR startup. The studio launch is the piece that ties talent, cameras, and capital into an end-to-end VR film company.
First-order effects
- Jaunt gains in-house Hollywood-caliber directing and production talent at its new LA studio, letting it originate VR films rather than just supply capture technology to partners.
Second-order effects
- Oculus Story Studio now faces a well-funded independent rival for VR-native content, while Jaunt's planned camera-leasing model turns competitors into customers who still route their productions through Jaunt's stack.
Third-order effects
- The endgame visible in this coverage cuts against the studio-launch thesis: by late 2018 Jaunt had laid off much of its staff and shut down its VR projects to pivot toward AR and volumetric capture, and in 2019 Verizon bought its software assets after roughly $100M raised — suggesting independent VR content studios could not sustain themselves without platform ownership.
The trend: VR content production is consolidating around platform owners — headset makers and carriers — rather than surviving as independent studios, however well-funded or credentialed they start out.