For over 30 years, Brett Leonard has been an award-winning film maker and technologist at the forefront of the digital media revolution. He is widely recognized as a top thought-leader in Virtual Reality since introducing the concept and term to popular culture as the Director/Writer of the seminal hit cult-classic film “Lawnmower Man” starring Pierce Brosnan, which is also one of the most commercially successful independent films of all time, grossing over $200MM globally in all markets on a $5MM budget. Brett was one of the first to pioneer modern stereoscopic techniques and photo-realistic CGI in his hit IMAX 3D film “T-Rex” (100MM on IMAX screens alone), and introduced American audiences to Russell Crowe in his film “Virtuosity” (which also starred Denzel Washington) along with many other talents both in front of and behind the camera.
Brett’s work as a visionary Director/Producer/Futurist has always pushed the edge of innovation in the entertainment industry, and continues to do so with a project slate dedicated to defining a new process of content production for the emerging era of A.I. and the Metaverse.
Brett recently directed “Hollywood Rooftop”, the first film to be shot in both 360VR and traditional cinema, combining the mediums for the first time, and the theatrical feature film “Triumph”, starring Academy Award Nominee Terrence Howard, star of the hit television series “Empire”, and RJ Mitte, star of the legendary series “Breaking Bad”. – “Triumph” won the Ruderman Family Foundation’s award for authentic portrayal of disability in a motion picture, and was released in theaters in 2021.
Brett recently co-founded a Medicinal Immersive Media company called Ubiquity VX with business pioneer David Kerzner and world-renown clinical VR researcher Dr. Albert ‘Skip’ Rizzo, with a mission to heal the human body and spirit through the use of groundbreaking Virtual Medicine therapy.
Brett’s core philosophy, born out in all of his work is: “To empower people to create and experience transformative story, character, and emotion in any medium, no matter what the technology being used to enable it”.