In 2017 Sony Pictures released the third installment in the Smurf's film franchise – The Lost Village. To promote the film AOL Partner Studios created an augmented reality (AR) experience, turning the real world into a Smurf playground, using the Microsoft HoloLens
Once the user puts on the HoloLens headset they are transported into the world of the Lost Village. We took elements from the movie to immerse the audience in a Smurf-themed world. Papa Smurf acted as the user’s guide to the augmented world, introducing the concept of the game and demonstrating how to play.
The diminutive size of each Smurf 3D animation worked perfectly with the HoloLens field of vision. This allowed us to bring each character to reality in a way not seen before interacting with real world objects.
This was the first time that a brand had used Microsoft Hololens and was a shining example of innovation in theatrical marketing resulting in 40M media impressions and 15M video views of the behind the scenes and "making of" footage
