A London-based studio developing interactive phone-first shows has raised 拢4.5 million in seed funding and rebranded to Scriptic.
ElectricNoir was founded by Nihal Tharoor (CEO) and Benedict Tatham (chief creative officer), who saw a latent opportunity in the entertainment space: immersive, phone-first interactive shows that sit at the intersection of film and games, and put audiences in control of the action.聽
For the company鈥檚 BAFTA-nominated Dead Man鈥檚 Phone, 80% of players identify as true crime fans rather than gamers. In the show, which was recently re-released as the highly popular Scriptic: Crime Stories on Netflix as part of the streaming service鈥檚 games offering, players become the lead detective in a gritty crime drama, solving murders through victims鈥� smartphones.
The company has also launched a number of episodic and short-form titles across a range of genres through its proprietary Scriptic app, which has reached 1.5 million organic installs across Apple and Android to date.聽
Scriptic is one of the first entertainment companies to leverage generative AI tools in a production capacity, having first used ChatGPT and DALL-E in 2021 to help with content production. The studio鈥檚 Dark Mode horror anthology, launched in January, not only leveraged AI for content production but also used it as a creative tool; human creatives worked with the likes of DALL-E, ChatGPT, and Murf.ai to create the series鈥� visual art, voice acting and text.聽
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March鈥檚 comedy courtroom drama You Be The Judge! and recently-released zombie series Viral both prominently used generative AI tools.
The round was led by BITKRAFT Ventures with participation from Tower 26 and the Amazon Alexa Fund, as well as additional and returning investors.
鈥淲e created Scriptic with the aim of entertaining the world with stories that reflect our ever-changing digital lives,鈥� said Tharoor. 鈥淏y bringing together a hugely talented creative team, our proprietary tech offering and a host of cutting-edge generative AI technologies, we鈥檝e been able to create immersive stories that really resonate with audiences, purpose-built for the most interactive medium there is – our phones.聽
鈥淭oday鈥檚 funding, from an incredible cast of new and returning investors, will empower us to pursue our vision of becoming the 鈥楻oblox of narrative鈥�. We鈥檙e excited about building out our pipeline of interactive shows across new and existing IPs, opening up our community for user-generated content, and taking the next step in our ambitious company journey.鈥�