With Verizon broadband, you don’t just watch movies, you star in them. Verizon Action Hero increases brand percept of Verizon as a broadband and entertainment company by giving consumers an online experience unlike anything they’ve seen. Upload a picture of your face, then choose your own thrilling action adventure from thousands of possible combinations—selecting the bad guy, dialogue, scene choices, and soundtrack. The site will then transform you into a 3D superstar (an online first) and put you right in the middle of the action. Watch the movie online, share with friends, or download and post to YouTube etc.

Action Hero is a first-of-its-kind experience that shows the future of a number of trends, combining better-than-game-quality CG with 3D face mapping and interactive storytelling. The site uses a server-side render farm that creates 3D models from photos, composites them onto action hero bodies, and delivers rendered films to users within 24 hours. A branding site with such a robust back end points to a future where brand experience is not bound by the limitations of Flash or a user’s PC. Online advertising and media partnerships drive to the site, but it is primarily viral.