Despite all the big reunions and starmaking performances, the real takeaway from this year’s Coachella festival is that Dr. Dre, as part of his Sunday night headlining set, actually commissioned a motherfucking life-size hologram of the late Tupac Shakur, dead nearly 16 years now, to come out and perform, a WTF stunt that absolutely got the attention it was engineered to get. And as it you’d expect, this thing was not cheap. MTV reports that the hologram was created by Digital Domain, the movie special-effects team who made age-adjusted versions of Brad Pitt for The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button and Jeff Bridges for Tron: Legacy. (It would’ve been pretty cool if hologram Tupac had been middle-aged, but they didn’t do that.) And they also estimate that it could’ve cost anywhere from $100,000 to $400,000.
Dre, who worked closely with Digital Domain to create the hologram, might get more of a return on his investment in the months ahead. The Wall Street Journal reports that Dre and Snoop Dogg are considering the idea of a hologram Tupac tour, in which the ghostly CGI rapper would tour with actual flesh-and-blood rappers. It’s hard to imagine how that would work, especially when you factor in the likelihood of an overeager hypeman accidentally smashing the hologram screen while jumping around, but it’s a fun thing to think about.
Below, watch footage of hologram Pac in action.
Coachella will, of course, return next weekend, presumably with hologram Pac along for the ride. Read our comments-section mainstay Michael_’s account of the whole weekend.
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What if there’s a hologram Biggie would the two have hologram beefs?
Hmmmm….. hologram beef.
Yeah right “might go on tour.” We all know the hologram has become sentient and needs to feed on brains to live, and this ‘tour’ thing is just a facade to divert attention away from all the missing hologroupies. Drop the charade! The public needs to know!
I would sadly pay to go see it.
Disgusting. I hope this doesn’t become a common practice.
Artists can now start doing duets with dead singers. This is phase 2.0 of the Natalie Cole experience.
awesome. i hope this becomes a common practice.
This has inspired Mitt Romney to name Hologram Reagan as his running mate.
Coachella 2013: A festival line-up not to be missed! Check it out: http://www.aux.tv/2012/04/coachella-announces-all-hologram-festival-featuring-only-dead-people/
If you want real holograms, there is actually a Kickstarter project called
Litigram that is happening right now, which lets regular people (not just
Tupac) become holographic (real holograms, not fake projections). Pretty amazing technology. Litigram – http://kck.st/GXHlbo
It’s amazing how even a fake Tupac can impact an audience to this magnitude. Not sure how taking the hologram on tour will turn out. The hologram had a certain “wow factor” and I’m not sure if it would still impress an audience after the hologram has been seen.