Friday May 30 is the day that Apple premieres its concert-style documentary, Bono: Stories of Surrender, a close look at U2 frontman Bono and his life and career.
The debuts on Apple TV+ on Friday, May 30. Apple will also make a version of the film shot in Apple Immersive Video available to Apple Vision Pro users. At 1 hours and 26 minutes (a first, as previous Immersive Video films have had much shorter running times, usually in the 5 to 15 minute range), the new film marks the first feature-length “Immersive Film” for the Apple Vision Pro.
Bono recently sat down with Variety’s Mike Fleming and discussed the project, as well as how Apple is working to make the Vision Pro more affordable for the masses.
DEADLINE: The first time I saw the film on Apple Vision Pro, I was the proverbial caveman looking at fire. I felt like I was onstage with you. What sparked you to put in that work here to help advance this technology, and where do you see it going in terms of disruptive storytelling?
BONO: Apple have this new sonic innovation commitment to fidelity of sound. Sounds are becoming really important in movies, in people’s home cinemas. The Vision Pro, it’s a commitment. You’re getting into a world, and there are extraordinary things I’ve seen through the Vision Pro. … We had this idea of, well, the camera can be onstage and walking around you. We couldn’t light it as easy as we thought, but we successfully got the viewer on stage. I took out my drawings from the stage show for the filming, and they’re not in the 2D Apple TV+ version of Stories of Surrender, but they are in Vision Pro. Those childlike drawings — no one would like to be able to draw as badly as me — but it’s like a signature, a fingerprint.
DEADLINE: How did it help to personalize an already personal story?
BONO: It made it really playful. I know Apple are dying to make the Vision Pro more affordable and more democratic, but they’re committed to innovation, they’re committed to experimenting. They know not everyone can afford this, but they’re still going for it, believing that some way down the line, it’ll make financial sense for them. But the fact that they may have to wait a while is not putting them off.
U2, Bono, and Apple have long collaborated on several projects, including a free U2 album that automatically appeared on users’ devices, leading to complaints by the owners of said devices), so his thoughts are not thos eof an outsider looking in.
Several reliable sources have made comments about the possibility of a cheaper Vision headset, including Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman and The Information’s Wayne Ma, who said last summer that Apple would be putting the high-end version of the Vision Pro on the back burner, to allow development teams to focus on creating a more affordable model.
