Doug Liman hopes to expand on Asteroid

Doug Liman wants to make Asteroid a full feature film.

The Bourne Identity filmmaker is proud of his XR short - which will launch later this year on Google’s Android XR platform - and is "really excited" to do even more with the virtual reality technology in the future.

He told Deadline: “This started as a feature script which I cut down, or just one part of it, to create a short film. I haven’t made a short film since film school. They’re really hard. If you saw my film school short films, you would be like, ‘Oh my God, these things are terrible.’ I literally have never made a good short film until Asteroid… it’s never too late.

“There is a full story I want to tell of Asteroid that is feature length or longer and then part of the excitement of getting to do this with Google and with the Android XR headset is that I’m hoping you want to know more. With The Bourne Identity, you wanted more, and you got four more movies.

“My goal is to create movies and experiences that people want more of… but I’m also really excited about where it’s going with the story extension. You’re just getting a little taste of it.

"he film is done, other than a few technical things that I noticed here, because it’s really right off the press, but you only saw part of the story extension.

"My plan had been to do the short for Android as a launchpad to go make the feature."

However, Doug admitted it could be even more challenging to put together a full feature film.

He said: "The reality is that the experience is so powerful in 180-degrees, that I’ve set a very high bar for what I would hope to create on the big screen if I did it for Imax because as incredible as Imax is, it’s hard for it to compete with the experience you have watching on a headshot.

“We could end up making seven more instalments for the headset… I’ve learned so much about storytelling on this… I was also planning to go shoot a movie in outer space with Tom Cruise and the reality is the experience you have watching Asteroid on the Android XR is that you are so inside a Hollywood movie in a way I’ve never experienced before."

And the director found filming the short to be highly "ambitious".

He said: “The moment you say you’re going to cram people in a teeny space and shoot that for a VR headset you’re in for a world of hurt. Right from the beginning you’re like, ‘You can’t do that, you can’t get the camera that close to people,’ but you have to be close because the space is claustrophobic when they’re in the capsule.

“Technically how to film that was more ambitious than any filming I’ve ever done."

The full Asteroid experience features a pre-chat with NFL player DK Metcalf generated by Google's AI assistant Gemini before the viewer is plunged into the 180-degree short. There is then an interactive extension, also powered by Gemini, which allows the viewer to help solve what really happened on the asteroid.