Zak Penn

Our guest is "Ready Player One" screenwriter Zak Penn. He is also a prolific filmmaker, earning nerd cred with the doc "Atari, Game Over." In the news this week, Siggraph's 50th kicks off in LA, $50M in funding for Inworld's AI NPCs, Virtuix (omnidirectional VR treadmill) raised $5M, and Hologate, the most successful LBVR company in the world, raised $8M. Thank you to our sponsor, Zappar! Don't forget to like, share, and follow for more! Follow us on all socials @ThisWeekInXR! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We've got a great episode this week! Zak Penn, screenwriter, director and all around awesome guy, joins Jeremy and Jeremiah in the "Green Room" this week. The guys discuss the creative process, screenwriting, and Zak's involvement in Ready Player One as he worked along side Steven Spielberg! Also in today's "Behind the Curtain" segment, Jeremy discusses the creation of the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary developer diary that Mediajuice Studios produced. And in this week's "Cutscene," we've got Jeremy's recap from Comic-Con! Check out all things Mediajuice by heading over to Mediajuice.com! Produced by Jeremiah Isley, Mediajuice Studios LLC.

While the main show is solely for qualitatively cherished entertainments of the '80s, this bonus episode not only allowed Scott and Drew a chance to dig into Steven Spielberg's brand-spankin-new adaptation of a book that could have only been written because of the '80s, Ready Player One, but those insights are fleshed out via an interview with that film's writer, Zak Penn, who talks at length about his own intense '80s experiences, and the films that inspired him to become a filmmaker.

This week we're talking to director, producer and writer Zak Penn about his new movie, The Grand. In this latest venture Penn is behind the camera as the director of an improvisational comedy. Using a handful of actors playing characters competing in actual poker tournament, The Grand stars Jason Alexander and David Cross. Amazon DVD editor Angela Langmann recently spoke to Zak Penn about his work on the movie. Thanks for listening!