Mr. Right
An Interactive Rom-Com
Mr. Right is the world’s first interactive romantic comedy, created by award-winning director Paul Feig’s digital studio, Powderkeg Media. I produced the interactive and XR elements of the experience, with my partners at Type/Code.
Inspired by the personality quizzes made popular by magazines like Elle in the 90’s and BuzzFeed in the 2010’s, we went beyond the standard branching narrative that has been often used in other genres, to build an interactive experience that feels uniquely suited to the classic rom-com narrative structure. As the user follows along with Sophia’s madcap plan to win back her ex by passing off a robot as the perfect wedding date, every choice you make – from how to explain him to her mom, to how you pose him in augmented reality, to which photos you add to his social media profile – is defining his personality behind the scenes, resulting in how the wedding finale plays out, and whether our heroine finds true love. It’s My Best Friend’s Wedding for the AI generation.
The goal of Mr. Right was to bring an interactive narrative experience to a young, female audience. From the quiz-based system that defines Rob’s personality behind the scenes, to the phone-native interactions such as texting and video calls you have with the supporting characters, every piece of the experience was inspired by how young women use their smartphones today.
Built on Google's Flutter framework and integrated with Unity, our tech stack allowed us to cross-publish to iOS and Android while infusing the story with engaging character interactions through augmented reality. Sam Asghari (AKA “Rob the Robot”) was captured on a volumetric stage and rendered in 3D by Evercoast and streamed through the Mr. Right app to the user’s device, where they influence the story outcomes by manipulating him in their own environment.
