How ‘The Green Fairy’ morphed into a transmedia franchise for CONICAL

In 2016, he founded CONICAL, seeing an opportunity to take advantage of the growing momentum around interactive storytelling. With game engines at the core, he knew they could start telling different types of stories—ones that didn’t necessarily have to begin and end in one medium. But for now, it was full steam ahead on The Green Fairy VR, a prototype production of that would begin to dig into Davila’s lamppost inspiration.

Like all prototypes, CONICAL quickly began testing it out to see if they had something. One of their first stops was New Zealand’s Westfield Malls. A few interactions and it was easy to see that they had the makings of a hit on their hands. The New Zealand Film Commission saw something, too, and invested in the project, helping them build out the concept into the 10-minute virtual reality short it is today.

What’s so charming about The Green Fairy, besides its upbeat characters, is that it’s essentially a story about realizing that our unique qualities are what make us special. Our heroine has to learn this the hard way at the hands of some mean yellow fairies (you can see the whole thing on Oculus now), but ultimately, this path leads to self esteem and friendship. A wonderful premise for us all, and a big win for CONICAL. But now that they had started building this world, they didn’t want to let it go.