Samsung is stepping up its game in the virtual reality scene, announcing its planto launch its own VR movie studio in New York City.
The company behind the Gear VR headset said at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah that it will soon open the studio in the Big Apple.
At the moment, not much is known about the company's new studio. Samsung USA Chief Marketing Officer Marc Mathieu, only said that the studio will be situated in the Samsung office where the company's marketing team is also housed.
Samsung also took advantage of the event to announce that it has teamed up with the Sundance Institute, which organized the film festival, for one year. The goal of this partnership is to develop more filmmaking and creative opportunities.
Mathieu said that the company "loves stories." He added that Samsung also loves to help people tell stories.
As VR continuously gains traction among fans across the globe, it is necessary to create movies for VR headsets. Last year, Oculus introduced a subsidiary named Oculus Story Studio during the Sundance Film Festival. The VR film studio was formed with an aim to create movies in VR. In fact, it already premiered a five-minute animated short film titled "Lost."
In the meantime, at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, people who can't attend the event are still given the chance to watch VR content using the Milk VR app for Samsung's Gear VR and the Google Cardboard headset.
This app offers 13 films to watch until Feb. 12, including four videos created by Wevr, a virtual reality distributor. These films from Wevr include "theBlu: Encounter" about a close encounter with the planet's largest creature; "Irrational Exuberance" created by Ben Vance, an indie game developer; "Hard World for Small Things" which focuses on police encounters; and "Waves" a dream-within-a-dream developed by comedian and musician Reggie Watts.
