Consumer Trends Shaping the Future of Entertainment

The Information hosted a Video Summit to discuss the trends and technology shaping the future of in-home entertainment with the CEOs of Hooked and Kinema (previously Storyspaces) in partnership with Comcast Universal LIFT Labs.

“I think there still is an appetite for people to gather around films,” said Christie Marchese, founder and CEO of Kinema. “I think what that looks like in terms of exhibition is going to change a lot and we're really trying to tap into that and get around needing a traditional theater to have this type of in person and virtual exhibition."

Prerna Gupta, founder and CEO of Hooked noted that “before mobile phones, when someone sat down to watch a movie in the theater, or even watch TV on a couch, you had their full attention for 30-minutes to two hours, today, that's no longer true.”

With more devices, content formats, and platforms all competing for consumers' attention, there has been greater collaboration between corporations and startups in order to create the personalized, interactive, and immersive experiences that customers want.

“We've got extraordinary technical teams in house to focus a lot on building our platform out, continuing to develop our voice technology, integrating live experiences and customer feedback mechanisms into our platform,” said Bec Heap, SVP of Video and Entertainment of Comcast Cable, “but we also do buy or invest and partner with a lot of startups.”

As technologies like AR & VR become more widely adopted in the consumer market, there is an opportunity for content and entertainment to impact our lives in a much greater capacity.

“Teenagers are growing up now using [AR filters] to express themselves and they're starting to see themselves as they look in their AR filters and I think this is really profound because there is starting to be a mixing between reality and fantasy” said Gupta, “and as we start creating our own fantasy for ourselves, and as reality and fantasy start merging, I think what storytelling becomes and what entertainment becomes will fundamentally change.”