From left: Rose Ganguzza, Colin O'Donoghue and Jason Rothberg. Image: Xavatar
Film and TV star Colin O’Donoghue will co-host the talk show featuring the who’s who in entertainment, while Paddy Casey has been signed on as musical director.
With all the advances being made in the virtual and extended reality space over the recent year, it will come as no surprise that a CGI-animated show broadcast straight from the metaverse is about to hit more than 64m television screens in homes across the US.
Devices such as Meta’s Quest 3 and Apple Vision Pro released earlier this month are making the visually stunning technology accessible to more people than ever before and indicates that the metaverse seeing something of a comeback, even as everyone talks about AI.
But what may come as a pleasant surprise to many is that the company offering this metaverse talk show is based in the RDI Hub in Killorglin, a small town in rural Kerry, Ireland that is close to the Atlantic coast.
Fresh idea and format
Co-hosted by Irish film and television star Colin O’Donoghue, the Xavatar Talk Show struck the major deal earlier this month to partner with premiere US-based arts network Ovation TV and family-friendly cable television network UPtv.
O’Donoghue, best known for portraying Captain Killian “Hook” Jones on the television show Once Upon a Time, will be joined by indie film producer Rose Ganguzza and Xavatar co-founder and CEO Jason Rothberg in hosting the one-of-its-kind show that will give viewers the option to interact with hosts and stars through the metaverse.
“Nobody’s really ever done an animated talk show. It’s exciting that to be part of something that’s so fresh, especially with the metaverse and the worlds that they’re creating online for people to be able to explore as part of this experience that will be linked to the show,” O’Donoghue told me in an interview recently.
As someone who dabbles in music himself, O’Donoghue is passionate about the industry and the people that give it life. And to add to the string of Irish talent behind this show, Paddy Casey has been signed on as musical director of The Xavatar Show.
“We’re going to be getting people across the board, there will be actors, directors, musicians, producers – people from all walks of the film and music industry. It helps that we have a slight inside knowledge of what it’s like in the industry across the board.”
The idea behind Xavatar was formulated during the lockdown, when Rothberg and his co-founders Kevin Sharpley and Gianfranco Bianchi embarked on a journey to create a real-time reactionary avatar for Zoom calls.
‘New digital frontier’
Invited to do a panel at Cannes Film Festival in 2021, Rothberg – who is not a fan of video calls – wanted to do things differently. Bianchi, a visual artist with expertise in VR, had a working prototype ready in less than a month after being approached by Rothberg and the panel went ahead to a great reception.
“The reaction was incredible,” Rothberg told me in an interview.
“There must have been 300 or 400 people in the audience and by the time I was done with that 15-minute panel, I had several hundred people asking me on LinkedIn and Instagram how they could do something similar. So right away, we knew that there was an interest or people that also were looking for a fun solution to this type of communication.”
Soon the Xavatar team started developing AI, facial mapping and audio recognition technology and brought in Dean Lyon, a visual effects expert behind blockbusters such as Armageddon and the Lord of the Rings films, to help them with the animation.
Since then, there’s been no looking back. Last June, Xavatar signed a deal with Kerry-based Fexco Group to underpin a bespoke digital wallet to make payments easy and safe in the Xataverse, the name given to the digital world created by the start-up.
“The Xavatar Show is poised to lead the way in the new digital frontier of immersive media, allowing viewers to expand their horizons within the Xataverse [Xavatar version of the metaverse] by attending the show as their Xavatar selves on the Xavatar space station,” Rothberg said after its recent US TV deal.
“These are really exciting times for individuals, like us, who deeply care about the connective tissue between music and film and how each medium progresses in a world with an increasing digital footprint.”
Find out how emerging tech trends are transforming tomorrow with our new podcast, Future Human: The Series. Listen now on Spotify, on Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.
