Weekly Journal: Metaverse Activations from Lamborghini, Jurassic World, Teletubbies, Deepak Chopra, Atari, Attack on Titan, Hellboy, and More
[6 min read] Your weekend guide to getting ahead on the digital frontier. Learn about how big brands are still betting on the Metaverse to grow a fan base of digital-savvy customers.
Welcome to this week’s Weekly Journal 📔, your guide to the latest news & innovation in emerging technology, digital assets, and our exciting path to the Metaverse. This is week 137 of the 520 weeks of newsletters I have committed to, a decade of documenting our physical and digital lives converge. New subscribers are encouraged to check out the history & purpose of this newsletter as well as the archive.
- Ryan
🌐 Digital Assets Market Update
To me, the Metaverse is the convergence of physical & virtual lives. As we work, play and socialise in virtual worlds, we need virtual currencies & assets. These have now reached mainstream finance as a defined asset class:
🔥🗺️Heat map shows the 7 day change in price (red down, green up) and block size is market cap. Bitcoin at fresh all-time highs this week 🤓
🎭 Crypto Fear and Greed Index is an insight into the underlying psychological forces that drives the market’s volatility. Sentiment reveals itself across various channels—from social media activity to Google search trends—and when analysed alongside market data, these signals provide meaningful insight into the prevailing investment climate. The Fear & Greed Index aggregates these inputs, assigning weighted value to each, and distils them into a single, unified score.
🗞️ Metaverse news from this week:
Meta Smart Glasses Leak Reveals Gesture-Based Future for Digital Interaction
A leaked video shared by user @Lunayian on X has given the internet a glimpse into how we may soon interact with digital content: through the air. The footage appears to showcase hand gesture controls for Meta’s upcoming smart glasses with integrated display capabilities—possibly part of Meta's next-generation Ray-Ban or Quest hardware. In the short clip, users are seen navigating digital menus and performing actions like clicking, dragging, and scrolling using subtle hand motions in mid-air. Unlike VR controllers or touchscreens, these gestures suggest a more seamless, embodied computing experience—marking a shift toward a spatial computing paradigm where the interface is all around you.
Metaverse Lens: This leak strengthens the narrative that mixed reality and spatial computing are converging. Rather than relying on bulky headsets or haptic gloves, smart glasses with intuitive gesture control could unlock mainstream adoption of ambient AR interfaces. These lightweight interfaces are central to the long-term vision of the metaverse—where digital and physical worlds blend, and users interact naturally with persistent virtual environments in everyday life. Meta's continued hardware evolution signals its ambition to lead this transition.
Lamborghini Revs Into the Metaverse With Hybrid Supercar Drop in Wilder World
In partnership with Wilder World, Lamborghini is minting 590 digital versions of the street model and 10 GT3 race variants as limited-edition collectibles. Priced at $300 each, they’re available from 11 July on Wilder World, OpenSea, and Lamborghini’s own platform, Fast ForWorld.
This marks a defiant return to metaverse innovation from a brand that never fully bought into the “metaverse is dead” narrative. Despite the 2022 downturn and a broader industry pivot to AI, Lamborghini has doubled down on digital presence. Its 2024 collaboration with Animoca Brands laid the foundation for immersive car collector experiences now coming to life in Web3. The Temerario is no slouch in real life either: featuring a V8 twin-turbo engine and three electric motors, it achieves 0–100 km/h in 2.7 seconds with a top speed of 343 km/h. With a lightweight ‘Alleggerita’ upgrade and enhanced aerodynamics, it’s a showcase of the brand’s hybrid high-performance vision.
Metaverse Lens: Lamborghini’s metaverse launch isn’t just marketing—it reflects a renewed belief in spatial computing as a luxury branding layer. The limited-edition NFTs represent more than collectibles; they’re programmable identity badges in virtual spaces, unlocking exclusive access, gameplay perks, and cultural cachet. As Wilder World and similar platforms mature, high-end automotive brands may increasingly use immersive ownership experiences to differentiate themselves in both physical and digital economies. Lamborghini’s move signals that the metaverse, far from forgotten, may be evolving into its next premium phase.
The Sandbox Launches Alpha Season 5 With Jurassic World, Attack on Titan, and $1M in Rewards
The Sandbox, a leading metaverse gaming and social platform under Animoca Brands, has officially launched Alpha Season 5, offering users six weeks of immersive digital experiences. Headlined by the Jurassic World: Dinosaur Preserve, this new season blends storytelling, user-generated content, and branded IP in a gamified metaverse setting. Other featured partnerships include Teletubbies, Atari, Deepak Chopra, Attack on Titan, Hellboy, Love Island, and more.
With over 40+ interactive experiences, players can explore everything from racing games and platformers to branded quests and social hubs. The platform's upgraded Game Maker 0.11 introduces enhanced avatar animations and mobility—enabling flying, double-jumps, and real-time multiplayer creation. The Jurassic World game lets players hatch, raise, and use digital dinosaurs across the platform, highlighting new NFT integration and dynamic gameplay. Players completing in-game quests can compete for a share of up to $1 million USD in rewards, alongside exclusive wearables and NFTs. Pre-registered players also receive a free Jurassic Raptor helmet to use in-game.
Metaverse Lens: This marks a significant evolution in how entertainment IP is being activated in the metaverse—not as passive digital collectibles but as interactive, persistent worlds. With Alpha Season 5, The Sandbox blurs the line between fan engagement, virtual ownership, and storytelling. The platform’s shift toward a “live service” model positions it as an ever-expanding social gaming layer of the metaverse, where brand universes like Jurassic World or Attack on Titan become immersive microverses that users can not only visit—but co-create within. This growing convergence of mainstream entertainment with user-generated 3D experiences is emblematic of the post-platform metaverse, where fans evolve into digital citizens, assets become composable, and culture becomes programmable.
👓 Read of the Week: The Metaverse Levels Up
This week’s pick dives into how AI, VR, and the metaverse are fusing to redefine the future of gaming. Alyssa Ivanova’s feature explores how intelligent NPCs, immersive VR environments, and expansive social gameplay are no longer distant visions—they’re rapidly becoming the norm. From AI-generated storylines to full-body haptic suits and virtual eSports arenas, this piece outlines a gaming frontier where creativity, inclusion, and digital community-building collide. For anyone tracking the evolution of metaverse-native entertainment, this is essential reading.
🎥 Watch of the week:
I’m not really a car guy but this Lambo launch is pretty cool
AI Showcase🎨🤖🎵✍🏼: Netflix Uses Generative AI in a Show for the First Time
In the Metaverse, AI will be critical for creating intelligent virtual environments and avatars that can understand and respond to users with human-like cognition and natural interactions.
This week, Netflix made headlines by confirming that it has used generative AI in one of its productions for the first time — signalling a major shift in how big-budget content might be created going forward.
The show in question is El Eternauta, a high-concept Argentinian sci-fi series set in a dystopian Buenos Aires plagued by toxic snowfall. According to Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, the company used AI-generated visual effects to depict a collapsing building — and the results were not only visually stunning, but also completed ten times faster than traditional VFX pipelines.
“This is real people doing real work with better tools,” said Sarandos. “AI is helping creators expand the possibilities of storytelling on screen.”
Netflix stressed that AI wasn’t replacing workers, but augmenting them. The tools were used by VFX professionals to accelerate pre-visualisation, shot planning, and scene production — particularly in areas where the cost of traditional effects might have made certain scenes unaffordable.
Still, the move reignites a heated industry debate. In 2023, fears over AI job displacement were central to the dual Hollywood strikes by actors and writers, who demanded — and won — contractual protections around the use of AI in production. Sarandos sought to reassure stakeholders that AI would remain in the hands of human creators.
Why it matters:
Netflix’s approach marks the first mainstream, on-screen use of generative AI in a major series.
It sets a precedent for how studios can lower production costs without compromising scale or ambition.
But it also underscores the need for clear ethical frameworks to protect creative jobs while embracing powerful new tools.
Bottom line:
AI is no longer just a concept behind the scenes — it’s now a core part of how the stories we watch are made. Netflix’s experiment with El Eternauta could be the beginning of a new era in film and TV production, where imagination is no longer limited by budget or bandwidth — but the conversation about creative control is far from over.
That’s all for this week! If you have any organisations in mind that could benefit from keynotes about emerging technology, be sure to reach out. Public speaking is one of many services I offer.