Doug Liman Talk About His XR Sci-Fi Project ASTEROID and Taking Viewers Beyond the Stars
Nearly thirty years after Doug Liman first hit Venice with Swingers, the director returned to the festival with something entirely new and ambitious. His latest project, Asteroid, which is a full-on XR (extended reality) experience that pushes storytelling into uncharted territory.
Asteroid, which competed in the Venice Film Festival’s Immersive Competition, stars Hailee Steinfeld, Rhenzy Feliz, DK Metcalf, Ron Perlman, Freida Pinto, and Leon Mandel.
The story follows a group of strangers who cram into an old Russian Soyuz rocket, chasing a fortune on a nearby asteroid. The catch? Only one of them makes it back to Earth.
At its core, Asteroid combines VR, AI, and interactive storytelling in ways audiences have never seen before. Liman and his 30 Ninjas team partnered with Google and Samsung for Android XR, a new operating system designed to merge AI, AR, and VR. The result is a project that feels as groundbreaking as it is cinematic.
“At 30 Ninjas, our mission has been to embrace new technology and storytelling. I have always been interested in movies that reflect the moment they’re made – that can be through the content, but also, the technology,” Liman explained in Venice.
“I’m a huge fan of Jim Cameron because he’s on the cutting edge. He’s telling stories that couldn’t have been told until that moment in time.”
The Asteroid experience unfolds in multiple parts: a pre-chat with Metcalf generated by Google’s AI assistant Gemini, a 180-degree live-action short, and an interactive extension where the audience helps unravel what really happened on the icy asteroid.
Viewers get dropped right into the chaos of launch, explore the unforgiving terrain, and even take part in an interrogation back on Earth.
Liman admits it was one of the most difficult projects of his career. “Right from the beginning, my career has been intertwined with advances in technology and obviously with Asteroid, this is by far the most ambitious thing I’ve ever done.
“It’s a giant Hollywood movie idea told in a VR headset and that just hasn’t existed before. The reason I’m so proud of it, is it was so friggin’ hard to make and why I now get why it hasn’t existed before.”
The director also connected the project back to his early filmmaking days, recalling how Swingers was made possible by new film stock technology that let him shoot without traditional crews and lighting setups. For him, Asteroid carries the same spirit of innovation, only this time on a much bigger scale.
Whether Asteroid will expand into a full feature film or episodic series remains uncertain. Liman revealed that it began as a feature script before being cut down into the XR experience:
“There is a full story I want to tell of Asteroid that is feature length or longer… My goal is to create movies and experiences that people want more of.”
For now, Asteroid stands as a bold step forward in blending Hollywood storytelling with immersive tech, giving audiences a way to step inside the kind of movie only Liman could dream up.