Former Tribeca Director Genna Terranova Heads to Amazon Studios for Virtual Reality

Janko Roettgers

Amazon Studios has hired former Tribeca Film Festival director Genna Terranova for its virtual reality (VR) initiative. A spokesperson for Amazon confirmed the hire Wednesday, but added that the company doesn’t have anything else to share about its plans for VR at this point.

The Hollywood was first to report on Terranova’s hire Wednesday.

Terranova had been working for Tribeca in various functions since 2007, and was named the director of the festival in 2014. Under her leadership, Tribeca significantly expanded its focus to include virtual reality and other new forms of storytelling. She left the festival in November.

Amazon, for its part, has been looking to expand into virtual reality for some time now. Industry sources told Variety earlier this year that the company had approached a number of VR studios about both licensed and exclusive content.

Job offers also hinted at plans to build apps for virtual reality headsets, and even produce original virtual reality content. For instance, in August, the company was looking to hire a “Virtual Reality Experience Development Executive,” whose responsibilities entailed the development of “innovative mixed reality experiences for distribution on Amazon Video.”

Amazon Video isn’t the only video subscription service to dabble in VR. Hulu rolled out apps for VR headsets earlier this year, and even commissioned a weekly VR news show from AOL-owned RYOT Studios.

Netflix has also taken some baby steps, launching VR apps on headsets like Google’s Daydream View. However, Netflix executives have publicly downplayed the importance of VR content, with CEO Reed Hastings repeatedly saying that the new medium was better for video games than cinematic content.

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