Award-Winning VR Comedy ‘Gargoyle Doyle’ Arrives on Meta

Meta headset users today can explore the witty, innovative immersive world of Gargoyle Doyle, a 40-minute virtual reality animation that won the coveted Cristal for Best VR at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival this summer.

Starring Jason Isaacs (Harry Potter, The White Lotus Season 3), Oscar nominee Haley Joel Osment (The Sixth Sense, Silicon Valley) and T’Nia Miller (The Haunting of Bly Manor, The Diplomat), this VR movie tells the story of a gargoyle stuck on the wall of a cathedral for 800 years, watching the world change for better and for worse.

“Gargoyle Doyle is a good old-fashioned, character-based story using the latest VR tech. The promise of a different experience in the cinema has been around for a while and finally all the elements have come together. It’s exciting!” Isaacs enthused.

 

Synopsis: After fate forces them together in the Middle Ages, Doyle (Isaacs) and Chet (Osment) watch the world change around them as their alcove falls into disrepair. Hundreds of years later, both must confront who they really are and what their lives add up to.

Gargoyle Doyle is a comedy of two ill-matched characters trapped together over centuries, providing an exaggerated canvas to explore universals of the human experience: our finite time on Earth, and the people with whom we spend that time. The cast of talking gargoyles and statues with very long lifespans allows for a novel perspective on chapters from history, the struggle of dealing with change, and failing to live up to your own expectations.

Written and directed by Ethan Shaftel (Ajax All Powerful), Gargoyle Doyle is produced by Shaftel’s L.A.-based immersive studio easyAction, and co-produced by Detona Cultura in Argentina and Amilux Film in Austria. It is distributed by Astrea, the distribution arm of the award-winning CAA-repped French production banner AtlasV (Wallace & Gromit in The Grand Getaway).

“Gargoyle Doyle is created to be just as accessible to a cinema audience as turning on your TV or sitting down in a movie theater, yet offering something special that can only be experienced in a virtual world,” Shaftel said. “Comedy is a great genre in which to integrate novel elements of spatial storytelling, changes of size and scale, and elements of interactivity, in a way that delights and engages the audience.”

The director added, “We want Gargoyle Doyle to be the thing you launch on your VR headset to show your friend or cousin that’s never tried VR before, knowing they’re going to love it.”

Download Gargoyle Doyle via the Meta Store here.