Netizaar Legend Talk: The Future of AI in Entertainment

Date: Tuesday Oct 29, 2024

Time: 5:30 PM

Location: The Multiverse

Come join us for an exciting evening with the legendary Riley R. Russell and Ed Annunziata. Get ready to be inspired and motivated as Riley and Ed share their views of AI in Entertainment.

Speaker:

Riley R. Russell (fomer Chief Legal Officer at SONY; current studio head at Kojima Productions USA) has over 30 years-experience in video game and interactive entertainment industry.

He has produced games, film, and television shows (all based on video game characters); he headed Sony’s Publisher Relationships during the turbulent PS3 Launch;(successfully) and oversaw a team responsible for a billion dollars in revenues while interfacing with the entire industry. His career has focused on content, in his career he has licensed just about everything from major game characters. He was instrumental in bringing Sony’s famous game "Uncharted" to the Big Screen and brought "Sonic the Hedgehog" to television for Sega. He also licened the popular game "The Last of Us" to HBO that became a wildly succcessful tv show.

Mr. Russell was a founding board member of the Entertainment Software Association and Entertainment Software Ratings Board as Sony’s representative. He is arguably “the most credited man in video game history” (over 400 credits according to Moby Games), based on over three decades of receiving “Special Thanks to” credits.

Speaker:

Ed Annunziata an iconic creator of many of the games that defined video games as an art and took the industry away from "just another shooter" games. Ed has made total of 23 games including popular titles like Ecco the Dolphin series (It generated total of $250M in revenues), Spider-Man, X-Men, X-Men 2, Jurassic Park, etc., and estimated to generate revenues over $500M in total.

Later he served as an Executive Producer for Nokia's N-Gage mobile phone and gaming device, helping to create nearly a dozen multiplayer titles for that platform and in the process helped to “define” mobile game play mechanics, one game called SmallBall Baseball, was one of the very first microtransactions-based games targeting the US market.

Simply put:

Ed is “Probably the most unique game designer on the planet”

- a Sony Executive.

Moderator:

Waylen Lin is a tech entrepreneur & film producer. He is the founder/CEO of Netizaar Inc. He is building the Netizaar app that is aiming to disrupt the Entertainment industry and to help creatives to navigate the era of AI that may cause massive job lost in the industry.

On the film/video game side, he has successfully raised funds for 7 movies and 1 video game project in the last 4 years. He has worked as Executive Producer/ Co-Executive Producer with Angelina Jolie (Come Away), Keanu Reeves (Bill & Ted Face The Music), Al Pacino (Billy Knight), Nicolas Cage (Sympathy For The Devil), Joel Kinnaman (Sympathy For The Devil), Charlie Heaton (Billy Knight), & Diana Silvers (Billy Knight).

On the video game side, he is working with Michael Bay and raised investment for the video game prototype that potentially will become a triple A franchise.

He also had the opportunities to raise funds for hit movies like Green Book, Once upon a Time in Hollywood, Joker, Top Gun: Maverick, Dune, & Barbarian in the past. Due to his recent success, he is in the enviable situation of continuously having many amazing Hollywood projects hitting his desk. Waylen has amazing breadth and great connections in the tech, film & gaming industries that is very rare among asian entrepreneurs/film producers.

Host or Publisher Netizaar