Does the future of film lie in VR? These crowdfunding projects say so

Virtual reality still sits at the edge of mainstream film and television rather than inside every living room, yet hardware sales and content revenue have moved well beyond the early experiments that once defined the conversation. Affordable headsets from several manufacturers opened doors for smaller productions, though the scale of adoption now depends more on consistent storytelling and distribution than on gadget novelty alone. Crowdfunding remains one route creators use to test ambitious projects before wider platforms step in.

The Choice

The Choice is a VR documentary experience inviting viewers to enter the digital consciousness of a virtual woman dealing with an unplanned pregnancy. This project is bold in more ways than one – tackling the controversial topic of abortion while also using VR technology to drive home its message. Speaking to Film Daily, director Joanne-Aśka Popińska explained why she chose to use VR to present the film’s key themes: “With VR, you are a crucial part of the story. We wanted to make viewers feel like this is their life, their problem, their dilemma. VR has an amazing ability to make you feel like you are in a different place and we wanted this place to involve dealing with an unwanted pregnancy.” In the story, the viewer becomes a fictional women who later meets up to discuss the option of abortion with several other female characters. “VR gives us opportunity to put us in situations we might not experience in real life,” added Popińska. “We do not know how we would behave in these places; so by creating them, we can give clues, putting us in those people’s shoes and helping us to understand their perspective.” The project has since moved past its initial campaign, premiering its first chapter at IDFA in 2021, winning the SXSW Audience Award in 2022, and releasing two new episodes that screened at SXSW in 2025.

Shades of Red

Launched by media company Hidden Tears, Shades of Red is described as “a virtual reality experience to promote social change”. Choosing to tackle one of the most talked about topics in the entertainment industry right now – sexual abuse – the project uses volumetric room scale VR, videogrammetry, and VFX and animation techniques to transform the user from a viewer to an integral part of the story. Creator, choreographer, and Hidden Tears founder Jordan Marinov explained that “when faced with stories in VR, users tend to intuitively grasp complex issues and are emotionally attached to the characters they are experiencing.” Shades of Red will present a survivor's journey from discovery to recovery of sexual assault, including a stylized representation of the number of sexual assault victims calling in to report their cases. “This virtual reality experience, encapsulating all performances on a visceral level, is aimed to give the user a deep spatial understanding of the story of a sexual assault victim.” Campaign references date to roughly 2018-2019, and no later public updates or completed releases have surfaced in available records.

In Here

Moving out of the arena of raising awareness and into that of pure entertainment is In Here – a short film about a young man in his 20s named Guy. According to the movie description, Guy is a secluded man who lives in a giant drywall box surrounded by video chat screens, projections, and images of his own imagination. “He’s waiting for his girlfriend to come back to the box, although she won’t tell him when. There’s probably a world outside for him, if only Guy could see past the fragile walls he’s put up.” Writer & director J.J. House described his intentions to make the film’s optimal viewing platform through a virtual reality headset. “However, unlike other live-action films made for VR, I will not be shooting with a 360º camera – instead I will use three digital cinema cameras recording simultaneously. The intended effect is to have an ultra-wide 270º view similar to an IMAX experience, yet as immersive as only VR can be.” The campaign references remain historical, with no documented later releases or screenings identified.

Origins Film

Origins Film is a documentary series about the creation of the American ethnic group and its ancestral populations. According to creator Rebecca Canales, it seeks to answer the following questions – who are the original Americans and where did they come from? “The virtual world is believed to be the best venue for presenting this information because it will allow us to put the viewer in the near east thousands of years ago, or in North America centuries later. Viewers will experience the sights and sounds of the world the ancestors lived in, from Viking Longships traveling across the Atlantic to the first contact between the Indigenous peoples of North America and Europeans.” No recent news, screenings, or updates have appeared in available records, leaving the project at its original crowdfunding stage.

VR Market Growth and Adoption Trends

Hardware adoption has accelerated beyond the early Kickstarter era. Meta Quest usage reached an all-time high in 2025, and more than 100 titles generated over one million dollars in gross revenue during the same period. Industry analysts project the overall VR market will expand at a compound annual growth rate of 26.2 percent through 2034, moving from roughly twenty-six billion dollars in 2026 toward one hundred seventy-one billion dollars by 2034. These figures reflect broader availability of headsets and sustained interest in longer-form narrative experiences rather than short demos alone.

Recent VR Crowdfunding Examples

Crowdfunding continues to surface new projects even as larger studios test the format. Body/Memory, a VR experience centered on breast cancer narratives, completed several funding rounds and has targeted a Venice Immersive premiere in 2026. Separately, ICE Hub launched a 2026 campaign to finance a series of VR films focused on child pedestrian safety education. Both efforts demonstrate that smaller teams still rely on direct audience support to reach festival and educational distribution channels.

Shift Toward AR and Mixed Reality

Industry attention has begun to tilt toward lighter formats. Nearly half of 2026 coverage of VR and AR topics now centers on augmented reality and smart glasses rather than fully enclosed headsets. Several companies have shifted resources from heavy immersive rigs toward wearable glasses that overlay digital elements onto everyday environments. This movement suggests future storytelling experiments may blend physical sets with digital layers instead of requiring viewers to enter fully virtual spaces.

Challenges in VR Content Creation

Despite hardware gains, creators continue to report practical obstacles. Many describe cooled mainstream hype and persistent difficulties securing consistent funding or distribution beyond festival slots. Meta Horizon Worlds encountered temporary uncertainty around platform support before a reversal, underscoring how quickly platform priorities can shift. These hurdles sit alongside the revenue growth numbers and remind producers that technical capability alone does not guarantee audience engagement or financial returns.

Crowdfunding helped early VR film projects reach audiences when traditional financing remained cautious. The same mechanism still supports select new titles, while market data shows measurable growth alongside ongoing creative and commercial tests. The conversation has moved from whether VR belongs in film at all to questions of scale, format, and sustainable production models.