Billionaire founder of XPRIZE Peter Diamandis is tired of the doomsday scenarios painted by movies like Terminator or Ex Machina.
The engineer and Harvard-trained doctor turned entrepreneur is trying to change the narrative with a new $3.5 million Future Vision XPRIZE. Backed by Google and talent management company Range Media Partners’ 100 Zeros initiative, the fund will promote “optimistic sci-fi,” offering a novel look at an often dystopian-geared subgenre of science fiction movies.
Aspiring filmmakers can submit three-minute trailers or short films that portray “positive visions of the future,” for the chance to be one of five finalists to receive $100,000 in cash. The winner will receive both the cash prize as well as $2.5 million to make their idea into a full-length film. This is combined with the $500,000 total given to the finalists plus $500,000 more in additional prizes not yet revealed to make up the $3.5 million prize.
The finalists will present their films at Diamandis’s Moonshot Gathering, a new conference he is launching in September aimed at younger entrepreneurs. Diamandis, who founded the XPRIZE Foundation to lead design and operations of large-scale incentive competitions, said he expects the final prize to increase as additional backers come on board.
