New film challenges the audience to participate

Posted Thursday, March 11, 2010 at 4:21 PM Central

by John Couture

One of my favorite type of books growing up were the "Choose Your Own Adventure" books in which the reader is an active participant in the fate of the story and characters in the book. Of course, that just dated me and demonstrated my inner geek all at once.

But alas, while the "Choose Your Own Adventure" concept was introduced in movies with the onset of DVDs, the idea was never fully realized. But a new company is hoping to change that.

There's a new German movie out called "Last Call" that hopes to bring audience participation to movie theaters. The idea is actually pretty simple. When you buy your ticket, you can opt to text your phone number into a database. Once the movie starts, one number is chosen at random and that person is called.

Once they pick up the call, they are then able to interact with the protagonist on the screen with the help of some proprietary software and help to determine the fate of the character and the movie as a whole.

There's a neat little trailer below that explains the concept and shows it in action. I wonder if Paramount will re-release Clue with this technology and have Tim Curry call an audience member to help him solve the murder.

What do you think of this new concept? Is it cool or will it simply be a distraction?