Digital Domain and directors Neil Huxley and Vernon Wilbert of sister shop Mothership teamed with Square Enix and Airtight Games to create this :90 trailer to launch the game Murdered: Soul Suspect, which is slated for release later this year. The trailer was unveiled during E3, piquing viewers’ imaginations with a brief origin story of the game’s protagonist, Ronan, and building to a climactic reveal, designed to drive viewers to a website to learn more.
Square Enix exec producer Naoto Sugiyama said of the decision to go with Digital Domain, “We needed a team that could pull off production quality of the highest degree, tell our story in CG in a way that felt emotive and powerful–more like a film than a game, and do it all within a games marketing schedule and budget.”
To realize the stylized, movie-like piece, Huxley and co-director Vernon Wilbert used the tools and techniques of filmmaking. They began by developing a story for Ronan, which then defined the structure and limitations of his environments. For the shoot, they segmented the script and shot it in sections, like a typical feature film, instead of shot-by-shot, the more common approach for games marketing.
“By working this way we were able to help the actor stay in the moment during the shoot and capture several different camera angles, which helped us avoid re-shoots,” said Huxley.
“Digital Domain has worked with some of the biggest directors of the past 20 years and brings that film knowledge to every project,” said Wilbert. “We took things like lens flares created for the game environment and re-created them so they could work in a real world. We adapted some of the visual rules of films that inspired us, and brought their style of lighting, cameras, shooting – even the contrast ratio from color grading – into this piece because they were great metaphors for this story.”
Huxley and Wilbert also leveraged Digital Domain’s virtual production studio and team, conducting a live action stage shoot to capture the mood, tone, lighting and body/face/voice performance that drove the digital characters and assets. They tapped the studio’s advanced facial capture and animation process and pipeline used on the Academy-Award-winning movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, on TRON: Legacy, Jack the Giant Slayer and many other top features and commercials.
Christopher Nolan’s Next Film Is Based On “The Odyssey”
Christopher Nolan is following his Oscar-winning "Oppenheimer" with a true epic: Homer's "The Odyssey." It will open in theaters on July 17, 2026, Universal Pictures said Monday.
Details remain scarce, but the studio teased that it will be a "mythic action epic shot across the world using brand new IMAX technology." It will also be the first time that an adaptation of Homer's saga will play on IMAX film screens.
Nolan has been an IMAX enthusiast for years, going back to "The Dark Knight," and has made his last three films exclusively using large format film and the highest resolution film cameras. For "Oppenheimer," the first black-and-white IMAX film stock was developed. Nolan hasn't said specifically what the new technology for "The Odyssey" will be, but earlier this month he told The Associated Press that they're in an intensive testing phase with IMAX to prepare for the new production.
"They have an incredible engineering staff, really brilliant minds doing extraordinary work," Nolan said. "It's wonderful to see innovation in the celluloid film arena still happening and happening at the highest level possible."
"The Odyssey" will be Nolan's second collaboration with Universal Pictures following "Oppenheimer," which earned nearly $1 billion at the box office and won the filmmaker his first Oscars, including for best director and best picture. Rumors about his next project have been swirling ever since, with near-daily speculations about plot — none of which turned out to be true — and casting. While there are many reports about actors joining the ensemble, none has been officially confirmed by the studio.
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