In July 2009, after a 27-year-hiatus, the story of Tron began anew when Flynn's Arcade reopened at Comic-Con. The Flynn Lives alternate reality game, created by 42 Entertainment, was the beginning of an elaborate lead-in to 2010's Tron: Legacy, a live-action 3-D movie with unprecedented digital effects. As the original Tron, released in 1982, became a cult classic, Disney struggled for years to devise a followup. When they finally came up with the right story, they decided to tell it not just on the movie screen but through a variety of media experiences, including video games and the ARG. The goal was to recreate Tron as an immersive world for fans to explore as deeply as they like. Long championed by 42 Entertainment and by producer Sean Bailey at LivePlanet (his partnership with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck), this ambitious new form of storytelling has now been embraced by Disney and by a new generation of Tron fans. But how does it really work? At this panel the key players involved will explain their ambitions, their motivations, the lessons they've learned, and the difficulties they've confronted as they pioneer a new form of narrative for the 21st century.
Doug McIntyre is the Director of Entertainment Show Development and Production for Creative Entertainment, located at the Disneyland Resort. In this role, Doug leads a diverse staff of more than seventy artistic and production professionals – along with countless creative consultants – who together provide the stage direction, choreography, writing, design, music and production skills behind the Disneyland Resort’s live entertainment offerings. Doug’s team is responsible for creating and producing over 900 shows and special events each year.
For the ElecTRONica project at Disney California Adventure, Doug led as Executive Producer and Creative Director.
Doug originally joined the Entertainment organization at the Disneyland Resort as a Stage Manager and Talent Supervisor. During his 25 years of service at the Resort he has been a Production Stage Manager, Production Manager, Manager of Project Development and Producer.
Frank Rose is the author of The Art of Immersion: How the Digital Generation is Remaking Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and the Way We Tell Stories, published in February 2011 by W.W. Norton. As a contributing editor at Wired, he has written extensively on the impact of technology on media and entertainment, covering such topics as the making of Avatar, Sony’s enormous gamble on the PlayStation 3, and the posthumous career of Philip K. Dick in Hollywood. He also serves on the editorial board of Boulder Digital Works, the digital education program of the University of Colorado. Before joining Wired in 1999, he worked as a contributing writer at Fortune and as a contributing editor at Esquire and at Travel + Leisure. His work has also appeared in New York, The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, and the Village Voice, where he got his start covering the punk scene at CBGB seventies. He has led debates about the future of media at the Cannes Film Festival, South by Southwest, the UN’s World Summit on the Information Society, and numerous other venues. His 1989 best-seller West of Eden, about the ouster of Steve Jobs from Apple, has recently been republished in an updated edition. He is also the author of The Agency, an unauthorized history of the oldest and at one time most successful talent agency in Hollywood. He lives in the East Village of Manhattan.
Susan Bonds is President and CEO of 42 Entertainment, the leading innovator of alternative reality games (ARGs) and creator of Flynn Lives for TRON Legacy. She has produced groundbreaking multi-platform entertainment, such as Why So Serious? for Warner Bros.’ The Dark Knight, which enticed millions of players worldwide become citizens of Gotham City for fifteen months leading up to the film’s release; Year Zero, a first-of-its-kind concept album, combining music with multimedia and interactive storytelling; ilovebees, the 2004 interactive prequel to Halo 2 unlocked by players answering payphones across the country; and The Vanishing Point, the first global puzzle/event game for the launch of Windows Vista. Prior to founding 42E, Susan produced Myst Online, a massively multiplayer online game, and worked for ten years as Creative Director/Producer for Walt Disney Imagineering, creating “E” ticket attractions such as the Indiana Jones Adventure (Disneyland) and Mission: SPACE (Epcot). Susan began her career as an aerospace engineer for Advanced Development Projects at Lockheed Martin, and also worked as an industrial engineer for Walt Disney World during the construction of Epcot. She lives in Pasadena, California and has an Engineering degree from Georgia Institute of Technology, and an MBA from Georgia State University.
